


Rogue's Last Run

by SassySnowperson (DramaticEntrance)



Series: Bodhi Lives [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Blood, Fix-It of Sorts, Food Issues, Galen Erso/Bodhi Rook (past), Gen, Humor, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaticEntrance/pseuds/SassySnowperson
Summary: The Rebellion releases a tribute honoring the memory of the Rogue One crew, one year after their deaths.This proves extremely inconvenient for Bodhi, who is still alive. With his supposedly-deceased face everywhere, it's a race against time. Can Bodhi finally find the Rebellion before the Rebellion accidentally gets him killed?





	1. Prologue: Remembrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are back! Finally! I always knew this one was going to take a little longer...I just didn't intend for it to take Quite This Long. That's life, though. 
> 
> The ever-lovely [Aeshna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeshna/) stepped up once-again as Beta. And plot adviser. And angst wrangler. And ridiculous idea encourager. And...look, if you're happy this series exists, you should probably thank her. I know I do.
> 
> For everyone who has been reading this through with me, thank you! I hope you enjoy the further adventures of K-2SO and Bodhi just as much as I do.

The nervous tech looked over and, seeing Leia's encouraging smile, pressed play.

> Leia: My family has been fighting for a better future for as long as I’ve been alive. 
> 
> {Scene: The Alderaanian royal family, Bail and Breha playing with Leia, age five.}
> 
> Leia: As I grew older, I was called to take action, working to protect those whom I held dear. And I fought for those ideals I was raised on - truth, justice, freedom, and peace. 
> 
> {Scene: Leia on the day of her election to the Senate, shaking the hand of a citizen of Alderaan.}
> 
> Leia: It wasn’t enough. While I watched, the Galactic Empire destroyed my home planet {Leia’s voice chokes up} and my family. 
> 
> {Scene: Asteroids tumbling over themselves against the black of space.}
> 
> Leia: They did this to ensure the compliance of a galaxy. But...
> 
> {Scene: Imperial banner over marching troops}
> 
> Leia: ...they failed. 
> 
> {Scene: Death Star Exploding}
> 
> Leia: And the reason they failed is because brave men and women were willing to lay down their lives, so that the Rebellion might live. Today, on the One Year anniversary of the Battle of Scarif, we remember Rogue One. 
> 
> {Scene: Cassian Andor, in serious conversation with two pilots.}
> 
> Leia: Cassian Andor was a devoted soldier of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. At great risk to himself, he took news of the Death Star back to the Rebellion. He gathered around himself a team willing to do what it took to defeat the Empire. He and his team made a surgical strike at the Imperial Archives on Scarif, ensuring that the Alliance pilots had the full Death Star schematics and were able to strike back. He was a man of fearless conviction and steadfast loyalty. 
> 
> {Scene: Panning over a still image of Baze Malbus, leaning back on a pile of crates, smiling. He is looking at Chirrut Îmwe. Chirrut’s body is leaning towards Baze, a grin on his face.}
> 
> Leia: Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe served as steadfast Guardians of the Whills, until their home planet was placed under Imperial occupation and their holy ground desecrated by Imperial forces. Baze would say that chance brought them to the Rebellion just in time to launch the Scarif offensive while Chirrut would swear it was the will of the Force. 
> 
> Leia: Either way, the two fighters seized the opportunity to strike back at those who stole their home. They joined the Rogue One team and fought, ensuring that our operatives had the time they needed to get the plans out. Their passion ensured our success. 
> 
> {Scene: Slow pan over Bodhi Rook’s wanted poster.}
> 
> Leia: Bodhi Rook was an Imperial pilot who followed the call of his conscience. For a time, he was content to live simply, doing what good he could within a cruel system. It wasn’t enough. 
> 
> {Scene: Slow pan over a close up picture of Bodhi among other Alliance troops}
> 
> Leia: In a desperate bid to make things right, Bodhi Rook made contact with Cassian Andor, bringing a vital message about the Death Star’s weaknesses. Bodhi Rook is a hero, and a reminder that the most ordinary among us can achieve extraordinary things. 
> 
> {Scene: Pan of the picture concludes on Jyn Erso’s face, looking determined as she addresses the troops.}
> 
> Leia: Jyn Erso had her family stolen from her by the Empire, her father held captive and her mother killed. And yet, despite knowing how terrible the world could be, Jyn chose to join with Rogue One in hopes of creating a brighter future. She was fearless in the face of adversity. 
> 
> {Scene: A world sits spinning, green and blue}
> 
> Leia: It is because of their sacrifice that we were able to destroy the Death Star. We remember them. But beyond them, we remember their message. It is all of our responsibility to fight against oppressors. Rogue One, we thank you, and we will not let you down. 

The tech looked back at Leia expectantly as the video ended. Leia opened her mouth to say something kind, but she was interrupted by a laugh behind her.

“That’s the finest bit of bantha fodder I’ve heard all day, Princess,” Han said. 

Leia gave an exasperated sigh. “Yes, it’s very sugar-coated.” The tech looked disappointed. Leia held up a hand. “Which is not your fault. It looks technically excellent.” 

Leia turned back to Han. “It’s sugar-coated, but it carries the message we need. This can serve as both propaganda and recruitment. We need numbers to sustain our fight.”


	2. In Which Bodhi Rook is Inconvenienced

* * *

[They left me out!] K-2SO warbled, outraged. His small cleaning droid body twitched left and right. 

Bodhi looked at K-2SO. “I really don’t think that is our biggest problem right now.” 

Two officers walked down the hallway. Bodhi ducked his head, letting the janitor cap fall over his eyes as he pretended to mop the floor.

[I fail to see what could be of greater importance.]

“Oh,” Bodhi said quietly, after the officers passed, “I don’t know. Maybe the fact that _my face is everywhere_ and we are currently on a _Star Destroyer_?” Bodhi’s hands clenched on the vibromop.

[Exactly. If they had featured me instead, we wouldn’t be having this problem.]

Bodhi tipped forward and pressed his head against the vibromop handle. “Okay, sure. We need to get out of here.” 

[We don’t have the data. You promised we were going to focus on finding the Rebellion.]

Bodhi gave a glance down the hallway. The voice of an officer shouting could be heard faintly. He was working himself into a lather—Bodhi could make out what he was saying despite the long corridor between them. 

“The false propaganda of the Rebel Alliance is well known to us! They spread discord and lies!” 

A roar filtered down the hallway as whatever troops he was addressing responded. 

“Victory to the Emperor! We reign supreme!” 

Bodhi swore he could feel the shout through his boots.

“The Empire rewards its loyal servants, but has nothing but contempt for traitors! All that comes of defying the Empire is a slow death!” 

Bodhi forced himself to breathe in and out through his nose as he heard the war cries filter down the corridor. 

[On second thought, we should go.]

“You think?”

Bodhi and K-2SO strolled down the hallway, back to where the shuttle waited. It was difficult to stay calm, as every third screen had an image of his own face staring back at him. He felt hideously exposed. He kept his head down, tucked his chin to his chest. 

‘ _Shuttle’s in the west docking bay. Need to make it through the corridors, up the ladder, and somehow pass by the barracks without any of the fifty-thousand or so people on this ship figuring out who I am. Sure. No problem. I’ve got this._ ’

[Stop fretting,] K-2SO said in a short whistle-beep.

“I’m not fretting.”

[Yes, you are. You’re doing that thing with your forehead.]

They managed to casually clean their way toward where K-2SO-the-shuttle was parked for a good ten minutes before anything went wrong. Which, despite being five minutes more than usual, was still not enough time for Bodhi. 

“Identity card,” said the stormtrooper. 

Bodhi fumbled a bit with his janitor’s badge. _'Don’t worry. Your identification is good,'_ he told himself. He wasn’t sure if he believed it. 

The stormtrooper took the card. Bodhi did his best to look bored. He had done this before. He had looked bored as people inspected his _completely legitimate_ identification paperwork. It was harder this time. 

“You look familiar,” the stormtrooper said. 

Bodhi shrugged. He really wasn’t sure what the right thing to say would be. _‘Well, if you direct your attention to the screen on your left, you will see why.’_ That definitely wasn’t the right answer.

“Anyway, looks good, go ahead.” Bodhi nodded and continued through the door. In his hurry to avoid the slightly suspicious stormtrooper, he ran straight into somebody else. That somebody else was an officer, and he looked more than slightly suspicious. 

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Hey!” he barked and started reaching for his sidearm. 

Bodhi didn’t wait for the confirmation that he had been identified. He picked up Kay-the-cleaning-droid and ran.

* * *

[You should have hit him with your vibromop.] 

Bodhi shot Kay a glare from across the small break room they were hiding in. “I didn’t think of it. I was too busy trying to get you out of there!” 

Kay shifted back and forth on the counter he was set upon. [This toaster has a socket input.]

“Don’t interface with the toaster.” 

[Too late. I—hm. Interesting.]

Bodhi hissed at Kay, “I swear, if you are having droid sex while I am trying to escape a _Star Destroyer_ —” 

[Gross. No. Not equivalent.] Bodhi would swear that Kay gave a shudder. [But the toaster is connected to the cruiser’s systems. I’ve been able to connect to the shuttle. We’re fine there, no suspicion. The shuttle is warming up and I’ve generated a route for you that avoids personnel contact.] 

“Generated a route for us,” Bodhi said. 

[No. You. This is an interesting backdoor. I’m staying here to exploit it.]

Bodhi wrinkled his nose. “Your choice of words does nothing to convince me you are not having droid sex.” 

[Humans are capable of finding innuendo in everything.]

“That was pretty blatant, Kay,” Bodhi said. He shook his head. “Alright, am I waiting for the droid body before we leave?”

[No. I don’t like this body much, and we have better on the shuttle. Route is mapped to your datapad.]

Bodhi pulled up his datapad. “Alright. Wish me luck.”

[No. Luck is a poorly implemented application of statistics.] 

Bodhi grinned. “Good luck, Kay.” 

[Stop.] 

Bodhi was smiling as he left the break room.

* * *

He was not smiling when he made it back to the shuttle. “I hope you’ve got a plan,” Bodhi said, as he raced over to the cockpit. He nearly tripped over Kitten, who let out an indignant squawk and rolled out of his way. Bodhi scrambled up the ladder.

“I do,” K-2SO answered over the shuttle speakers. 

“I hope you have a _good plan_. Because there are alerts going on. I heard at least one message over the intercom concerning a ‘suspected traitor and Rebel spy,’ and they’ve started locking down doors. I got through. I'll assume that’s your doing. Thanks.” Bodhi collapsed into the pilot's seat and ran over the console controls. Pre-flight looked good. “There’s no way they won’t be checking shuttle traffic in and out.”

“It is a good plan,” K-2SO said. “Just fly us out. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Okay,” Bodhi said, raising his eyebrows. He felt himself calm down as he ran through the pre-flight sequence. Kitten had rolled up the ramp and had settled in next to his chair. Bodhi gave a small smile at the pilot’s glareshades perched on top of its chassis. Appropriate.

“Landing locks disengaged,” K-2SO announced. Bodhi powered on the thrusters and aimed the shuttle at the exit. 

His comms crackled. “Shuttle ‘Dancing Hornet’ this is docking control, you are not cleared for takeoff.” 

“Now would be a good time for that plan, Kay,” Bodhi said as he reached for the comms. 

“Lie. Then fly very quickly,” K-2SO responded. 

“We’re going to die.” Bodhi reached for the comms anyway. “Docking control, this is shuttle ‘Dancing Hornet’. We have been scheduled on an emergency supply run, clearance coded Fifty-Seven Zeta.” 

“Hold, shuttle ‘Dancing Hornet.’ I’m not seeing any authorization.” 

Bodhi gunned the thrusters and hoped. 

Hope carried him through the shuttle bay door, around the ion cannons firing to stun the shuttle, and a respectable distance into space. Hope was then soundly trounced by reality, when the Star Destroyer’s tractor beam found a lock on the shuttle. The shuttle jerked and bounced, sounds of grinding metal echoed, and Bodhi was flung hard against his harness. Kitten slid around the cockpit, wheels spinning frantically to get a grip. Bodhi felt the shuttle strain forward, then give up and slowly be drawn back to the Star Destroyer. 

“Do you have a plan for this?” Bodhi asked K-2SO. 

“Yes, turn and face the ship. This is going to be magnificent.” 

Bodhi shot the closest camera a very exasperated look, but twisted so that he could see the main bulk of the Star Destroyer anyway. “Kay, what is going on?”

“Ready...and...disconnecting from droid body,” K-2SO announced. 

What looked like every weapon mounted on the Star Destroyer fired. _At once. **At the Star Destroyer.**_

“What in the—” 

In the aftermath of the fire, craters of sunken mental pocketed the warship. Flame vented out of several of them. Blue lines of electricity raced along the outside of the Star Destroyer, arcing. In their wake, lights flashed and then shut off as the ship went dark.

Bodhi was jolted around as the tractor beam let go and the shuttle suddenly began its forward motion again. 

“You should probably fly away quickly now,” K-2SO informed him. 

Bodhi tore his eyes away from the sight of the Star Destroyer arcing and burning. “Okay. How did you—?” Bodhi said as he punched the shuttle’s thrusters to get away from the large ship. 

“It was a very poorly secured toaster.” 

“You...you took over the Star Destroyer?” Bodhi said, flying faster. 

“Not entirely. Otherwise I would have just shut off the tractor beam. Inputs were too confusing. Too big. But I found weapon controls.” 

“Of course you did.”

“We need to go faster.” The shuttle jumped in speed as K-2SO took over the thruster controls.

“Give me some warning, I’m still not used to you doing that—”

“Brace for impact.”

“ _What?_ ” Bodhi said, as he braced. 

Behind them, the Star Destroyer exploded. 

The outward concussion blast of debris rocked the shuttle. For a second Bodhi was back on Jedha, holding on helpless as the Death Star blast that had destroyed his home raced towards him. The sick sense of dread and horror, of fleeing something incomprehensibly large and out of his control overwhelmed him. 

But only for a moment, then he was back in the shuttle, and he realized that there was no more Star Destroyer hunting him down. He twisted to look at where the warship had been. A rapidly expanding dust cloud was all that remained. 

“It was very poor construction to permit their gun’s firing arcs to shoot so close to the reactor,” K-2SO said. 

Bodhi started laughing. 

“Are you malfunctioning?” K-2SO asked. “Because it would be more useful if you programmed in hyperspace coordinates.”

“I—you just—that was an entire Star Destroyer!” Bodhi continued laughing, disbelief coloring his tone.

“Yes, you are very lucky to have me. I will be happy to accept further admiration after we have completed a hyperspace jump.”

* * *

The terminal let out a high-pitched ping. The technician closest to the terminal, a woman whose blond hair was mostly streaked with grey and with exhaustion bruising under her eyes, groaned. 

“New chatter coming in,” said the other technician, with the bright-eyed enthusiasm that only came with youth. “Up and at ‘em, Mika.”

Mika Hooper pushed herself up from the desk and blearily fumbled at the terminal. “I was on break, Alph.” 

“We don’t actually get breaks,” said Alph Razola, not looking up from his datapad. “Drink some caf and do your job.” 

“You’re lucky you’re talented, kid, or I would have ran you off crying a long time ag—” Mika’s grumbling cut off halfway through as she read what the terminal display. “Mother of moon and stars.”

This caused Alph to look up from his pad. “Hm?” 

“Nothing. A bounty.” 

Alph hoisted himself out of the chair, grabbed his cup of caf and wandered over to the terminal. He blinked. “That has got to be too many zeros. Empire typo.” 

Mika tilted her head to the side. “This is pulled directly from Enforcement DataCore. I don’t think it’s a typo.” She started typing at the terminal, earlier exhaustion supplanted by curiosity. 

“He looks familiar,” Alph said, taking a sip of his caf.

“Name’s Bodhi Rook,” Mika said, typing. 

Alph spat out his caf. “He’s dead!” 

“Last sighting two days ago, aboard the ISD Rapacious. How do you know he’s dead?” Mika asked, paging through different information sources. “Hm. ISD Rapacious was destroyed two days ago. That almost explains the bounty.” 

“No! He died a year ago! They made a video about him? It’s been playing nonstop. Mika, don’t you ever turn on your holoplayer?”

“No, I sleep, like a normal person. He doesn’t look very dead to me. He might be soon. With that big of a bounty I’m tempted to kill him myself.” 

Alph whacked Mika on her shoulder. “Don’t say things like that! He’s a hero of the Rebellion! He defected! Died making sure we had the information needed to take down the Death Star.” 

“Apparently not.” Mika said, recent sighting information flickering over to the screen. Surveillance video, grey and distorted, nevertheless showed an image of someone who, if they were not Bodhi Rook, was instead a clone or an unlikely twin. 

“By the Force, that’s him!” Alph made to whack her shoulder again. She caught his arm and glared at him. 

“This...could be a problem.” Mika dropped his arm and reached over to the comms. “General Draven, this is Hooper, we need you in communications immediately.” 

“You’re getting the General?” Alph bit his lip. “Shouldn’t we run it by Colonel Delto first?”

“We need to kick this one up the chain of command fast,” Mika said. “That video you talked about came out at the same time he was sighted. We blew his cover.” 

“I—no—that can’t be, he wasn’t working for us. We would have known that, right?” 

“We wouldn’t. Draven would. Which is why I called him,” Mika said as she continued compiling information on Rook.


	3. In Which There Are Too Many Bodhis

* * *

“We need supplies.” Bodhi announced, looking at the inventory. “We’re running low on, well, everything. Except toothpaste.” He gave a little shrug. 

“We should avoid major hubs until I have verified the distribution radius for the video. Additionally, there is a chance that the Rapacious managed to transmit news of your continued existence,” K-2SO answered through the shuttle speakers. 

“I really thought my life was done getting more complicated.” Bodhi sighed and thunked his head against nearby crates.

“There is absolutely no data that would support that. Extrapolating from current trends—”

“I know, it was just wishful thinking,” Bodhi said, lifting his head up. “Okay, what’s the most out-of-the way resupply depot we can reach without completely annihilating our fuel stores?”

* * *

Tarswe was a bland mid-level industrial port like thousands of other bland mid-level industrial ports. In other words, perfect for K-2SO and Bodhi’s purposes. With a completely clean identification for both human and shuttle, Bodhi landed in Tarswe’s docks without arousing any suspicion, as far as K-2SO could tell. Cargo manifest in hand and personal comm clipped to his shirt, Bodhi departed to try to wrangle a deal out of the various suppliers they would need. 

K-2SO’s newest droid body, a small DUM-series pit droid, accompanied him. K-2SO ran most of his attention through the pit droid, watching as Bodhi charmed and haggled his way through purchasing most of their manifest items. Crates began to arrive on the shuttle, replenishing lost stock. 

All in all, it appeared that despite the poorly timed and incomplete ‘Remembrance of Rogue One’ video, there was little attention paid to either them or their shuttle. K-2SO was running probabilities on chance of detection due to wider video circulation when Bodhi returned to the shuttle. 

This was a problem, as Bodhi was _also_ currently bartering for repair materials halfway across town. K-2SO hadn’t left Bodhi-Who-Is-Shopping’s company since he had departed from the shuttle. As such, he was 98.94% certain that Bodhi-In-The-Shuttle was an imposter. 

Near-Certain-False-Bodhi walked in, looked around, and ambled over to the small kitchenette area. He opened the fridge, pulled out some leftovers, and started eating them. 

What sort of imposter steals someone’s identity to eat leftovers? K-2SO didn’t understand organic life at all. 

Bodhi-Who-Is-Shopping was wrapped up his bartering and arranged for delivery. As they walked away, K-2SO asked him, “Do you have a twin?”

Bodhi-Who-Was-Shopping stopped and looked down at K-2SO. “No?” 

“You don’t seem very sure.”

“I am very sure I don’t have a twin. I am not at all sure why you are asking me that question.” 

“A clone? An incredibly lifelike hologram of yourself?” K-2SO continued. 

“Kay,” Almost-Certainly-the-Real-Bodhi said, his tone flat.

“You are also on the shuttle,” K-2SO informed him. 

Almost-Certainly-the-Real-Bodhi’s eyebrows raised considerably. “Are you okay?” 

“Yes. The shuttle’s intruder countermeasures are intact. I have not chosen to utilize them in order to obtain more data. However, it seems likely that something suspicious is going on. I suggest you remain inconspicuous while I gather more information.” 

“O...okay. Just let me know if you need backup. I guess...I’ll get some lunch.”

“Be certain to pick a venue that has extensive plant life to break any surveillance. And more than one exit.” 

Almost-Certainly-the-Real-Bodhi nodded. “And loud enough music playing that any conversations won’t be overheard. Sit with my back against the wall. I do know what I’m doing by this point.” 

“The first time I left you at a cafe you were tased and kidnapped. That leaves an impression.” 

Almost-Certainly-the-Real-Bodhi gave a soft sigh and nodded, veering off towards a likely venue. 

K-2SO was distracted from the lunch plans by another person who was not Bodhi entering the ship. At least this one had the decency to not look like him. Despite appearing both male and human, this person was tall, much paler, and had blond hair. 

Near-Certain-False-Bodhi startled as the person swiftly drew their blaster on him and tossed over a pair of binders, gesturing with their blaster. He rose from the table, hands up. 

“Hey man,” said Near-Certain-False-Bodhi, “you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Rook, the bounty is better if you’re alive, but I’ll take the dead credits in a heartbeat. Put the cuffs on or I shoot.” 

K-2SO was denied hearing what Near-Certain-False-Bodhi’s response would be by the third person who was not Bodhi (female, this time, and Rodian) entering the shuttle and shooting the Blond-Not-Bodhi. 

The Rodian looked at Near-Certain-False-Bodhi, hands still up, down at the cuffs, and nodded. “You know what to do.” 

“Bounty thief,” wheezed the blond man. 

The Rodian looked at him and gave a small shrug. “You stole my facial recognition software first.” 

In the time that the Rodian looked away from Near-Certain-False-Bodhi, Near-Certain-False-Bodhi pulled out his own blaster, and had it trained on on the Rodian. 

(“This is better than an action holodrama,” K-2SO informed Bodhi during the play-by-play he was delivering back in the cafe. Bodhi gave him an incredulous look, his face pale.)

The blond man commented, “This still ends badly for you, Rook. You shoot her and I’ll just take you in instead. There’s two of us, and one of you.” 

Near-Certain-False-Bodhi’s face blurred and melted into a vaguely reptilian form, scaled skin stretched tight over bone.

(“Ah!” K-2SO informed Bodhi, “Clawdite shapeshifter. That is much more predictable than long-lost twin. I’m disappointed.”) 

“As a matter of fact,” Definitely-False-Bodhi replied, “there are three of us.” 

The two other bounty hunters spat curses. The blond finally eased himself up from the floor slightly and offered, “Even if we split the bounty three ways, we’ll all still be rich.” 

“Shut up or I will shoot you again,” said the Rodian. 

They fell into bickering. During the bickering, K-2SO managed to obtain three important pieces of information. First, Bodhi had been confirmed alive after the destruction of the ISD Rapacious. Second, the bounty on Bodhi’s head was astronomically large. Third, these three were likely three of the _least_ competent bounty hunters after Bodhi. They were just the ones that happened to get here first. 

K-2SO relayed this information to Bodhi. Bodhi pressed his lips together and ducked his head behind his caf mug. His eyes darted around the room. “We need to get out of here.” 

“Don’t worry,” K-2SO responded. Before Bodhi could snap back an answer, he continued, “All the cargo’s been delivered except the maintenance supplies, and the refueling has just finished. We still have some maintenance stock, we will be fine.” 

Bodhi nodded, then twitched as a waiter came through the door too quickly. “I’ll feel better once we’re gone.” 

“Finish your food. I will finish the intruders,” K-2SO instructed him. 

The shuttle door closed. All three of the Not-Bodhis looked at each other. K-2SO felt a thrum of anticipation through his circuits. It was his first time getting to test out his new security countermeasures, after all.

* * *

Draven looked up as a man with short-cropped hair, dark brown skin, and a serious expression on his face walked through the door. Draven nodded at him, “Captain. What brings you to Intel?” 

Captain Barion Raner walked over, glancing down at the console where Bodhi Rook’s wanted poster was displayed. Raner made a small grunt in the back of his throat, before looking up at Draven. “Scuttlebut says that we’ve found a surviving member of the Rogue One crew.” 

“You know better than to come in here looking for rumors, Raner,” Draven replied. He looked down and saw that Hooper had already blanked out the screens. He nodded at her. 

Raner shook his head. “Wouldn’t dream of it. But, if this hypothetical person exists, and the Rebellion is interested in making contact, I’m interested in going. Got a small team that’s willing to come along as well.” 

Draven shook his head. “I’m going to have trouble getting clearance for even one person to go, hypothetically. Forget about a whole squad.” 

As he was talking, Raner passed him a datapad. Draven’s eyebrows went up as he scanned through the list. “Janson.” Draven dropped the pad and gave Raner a calculating look. “Janson’s in a bit of hot water after that fistfight with the Admiral’s son, isn’t he?” 

“I certainly wouldn’t speculate on his need to get out of town, Sir,” Raner said. 

“Verlaine. Just got back from her unauthorized tour of Alderaanian refugees. Nearly court-martialed for that.” 

“She’s a good pilot and a good fighter. Seems the only reason she’d stray is if Princess Organa asked her to.” 

“They’ll approve this mission just to separate the two of them,” Draven said, approval starting to color his voice. “I’m not aware of any issues with Moonsong.” 

“There’s not. But she was a smuggler, and I’ll need her for the backchatter. I’m assuming she’d be an easier pull than Solo would be,” Raner said, amusement quirking the corner of his mouth.

Draven snorted. “No shit. I might actually be able to get this through. They’re on board already?”

“Quietly.” Raner nodded.

Draven put the datapad down. “What’s in this for you? No pressing need for you to make yourself scarce.” 

“I flew Scarif, Sir,” Raner said. “Scarif made the Rebellion possible. And Rook made Scarif possible. If he needs some help getting out of trouble, well, I figure he’s earned it.” 

Draven nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Bodhi blinked in dismay. “No.” 

Despite his refusal, his bounty poster still hung in the air, displaying his face, his name, and an obscenely high number of credits offered in return for his corpse. The number offered for his living, breathing self was even higher. Bodhi blanched. “If I had worked my whole life, I would have never even dreamed of seeing this much money.”

“I do not suggest turning yourself in,” K-2SO stated from the shuttle’s speakers. “That would not be a pleasant way to acquire credits.” 

Bodhi gave a small high laugh. “Right, right. Lots of torture, general death-like things happening. Alright. We’ll need to hide. New identification on me and the shuttle, and we should probably give the shuttle a fresh paint job. Make it look as neutral as possible.” 

“You should probably cut your hair. And shave,” K-2SO said. “Actually, that would have aided in avoiding detection prior to now. Why haven’t you already?”

Bodhi, with one last head shake of disbelief, walked away from the terminal. He wandered over to the small mirror in the ‘fresher. He gave his face a critical once-over, running his fingers along his jawline. “I don’t shave because I like looking older than fourteen. But yeah. I guess I can.” 

“And the hair?” K-2SO asked. 

Bodhi sighed at the mirror, moving his fingers up to his hair. He started undoing his hairties. “I wasn’t happy being a cargo pilot, you know. This was my way of...I don’t know, sticking it to the Empire. I may be doing their work, but at least I had my small defiance. It’s a symbol.” Bodhi shook his hair loose and ran his fingers through it. “I’d rather not cut it.” 

After a moment of silence, K-2SO said, “Just so I’m clear, defecting from the Empire, getting a needed message to the Rebellion, turning and flying into battle, getting even more needed information to the Rebellion thereby facilitating the destruction of the Death Star, somehow escaping that battle, performing over a year of vigilante Empire-antagonization—including, but not limited to liberating a planet, and then assisting in the destruction of a Star Destroyer—is NOT enough defiance for you?” 

Bodhi stared at his reflection in silence for a moment. “I’ll get the clippers.”

* * *

Brentaal was a busy sort of planet that lived at the intersection of the Perlemian Trade Route and the Hydian Way. Teeming masses of every species came and went through the planet’s habitable canyons, far too many to track any individual person. At least, that was the hope.

Bodhi and K-2SO managed to live in the cracks of the pressed-together canyon populace for two weeks and three days before someone saw through the fresh coat of paint and the false shuttle ID. 

“Why did we even bother painting the shuttle?” Bodhi huffed as he dodged the shuttle through an asteroid field, fleeing the vessel of the bounty hunter behind him. It looked a malevolent starfish and it was spitting tiny seeker droids. Bodhi eased a bit more speed out of the engines. “We have an ion cannon. No other shuttle has an ion cannon.” 

Bodhi heard some machination grind above him. The shuttle hummed an energy build up and then jolted as a blast went off. 

“HA!” K-2SO said over the comms, triumphant. 

Bodhi whistled. “Nice shot.” 

The droid seekers went offline as the spiky ship exploded. 

“No other shuttle has a hidden plasma cannon either,” K-2SO said, somehow making the flat shuttle voice sound extremely smug. 

“The whole point of installing a _hidden_ plasma cannon is that the shuttle can’t be identified just because it has a plasma cannon.” 

“Well, it’s not identified anymore,” K-2SO pointed out.

Bodhi sighed.

“Because I shot the person who identified me.” 

“Yeah, I get it. With—”

“With my _plasma cannon_.”

* * *

Ingo was a backwater mid-rim world with large tracts of desert and forest only occasionally broken by mining or farming towns. Bodhi and K-2SO set up in the forest, with Bodhi taking the speeder into different nearby towns when they needed more supplies.

Bodhi settled in next to the small campfire he had made next to the shuttle. K-2SO watched as Bodhi speared some sticky white substance onto a stick and held it over the fire. 

“That seems barbaric,” K-2SO commented. 

“You’re just going to have to trust me when I say that one of the great tragedies of your life is not being able to eat toasted swampmallow,” Bodhi said as he slowly rotated the stick over the flames. 

“I will never understand organics and their bizarre rituals around food consumption. Also, swampmallow is a terrible name for a food.”

Bodhi’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’ve never really thought about the name. It’s just the stuff we ate when we went camping as kids. Before the Imperials came. It was fun to do stuff like that.” 

“Are you going to become weepy and nostalgic?” K-2SO asked. Mentions of Bodhi’s childhood tended to produce this emotional state. 

Bodhi smiled and shook his head. “Not tonight, I think. These are pretty good memories. And it’s hard to be too ‘weepy’ when I am about to eat a perfectly golden brown swampmallow on top of some chocolate cookies.”

K-2SO still didn’t understand food consumption rituals, but he had learned what joy looked like. And that was exactly what was on Bodhi’s face when he bit into the cookie. It was either exceptionally delicious foodstuffs or a particularly good childhood memory. K-2SO hoped it was both.

They were able to stay on Ingo two weeks even before someone recognized Bodhi’s face. After a tense speeder-race through the forest they were able to lift off, but not before Bodhi crashed the speeder and sprained his wrist. 

Back in the shuttle, arm propped up on the couch and wrapped in ice, Bodhi ran his fingers through his shorn hair. “Why did I even bother cutting my hair, if they were just going to recognize me anyway?” 

“It was probably a droid with a facial algorithm. We are far superior at identification. I think that you should consider purchasing a face-covering helmet, possibly with matching body armor.” 

Bodhi groaned.

* * *

Wes Janson squeezed his way through the crowd until he made it back to The Grinning Hutt, a small pub in one of Brentaal’s northern canyons. Verlaine and Moonsong were at the bar, but Janson pushed through to an out of the way table where Raner sat.

“I got confirmation at the docks, Rook left town about two weeks ago. Chased by a particularly nasty bloke in a droid-spitting starship. Who knows if our lost little lamb made it out in one piece?” 

“He did,” Verlaine said from behind him. Janson managed to stifle most of his surprise, but still gave a small jump. 

“Scavs picked up the remains of that starship in the system’s asteroid belt. Better yet, it was riddled with plasma burns. Your lamb has some teeth, Janson,” Moonsong said, bringing two drinks back to the table and sliding one over to him. 

Janson gave an impressed nod. “Alright, so he lived. Time to chase him on to a new system. It’s going to be hard bringing this guy in from the cold if he doesn’t _slow down_ long enough for us to catch him.” 

Moonsong took a pull of her drink. “If I had as many people after me as he does, I’d be running pretty damn fast too.” 

Janson tipped his head in agreement. “Fair point.” 

“We’ll just need to figure out how to get faster,” Raner said.


	4. In Which Our Heroes Make a New Friend

* * *

“I thought we were trying to avoid places with lots of underworld sorts?” Bodhi protested, staring at the suggested hyperspace route. 

“While that would be ideal, we are running low on clean identification. Besides, Kanata’s castle is a known neutral zone. She would shoot anyone who tried to hurt us. Or have them shot. She would also have us shot if we tried to hurt anyone else. Do you think you can avoid that?” 

“I am not the person on this shuttle that needs to be asked this question! ‘Do you think you can avoid that?’ Of all the ridiculous-”

“I am not planning on shooting anyone. If you are also not planning on it, there is nothing to worry about.”

Bodhi sighed. “And we do need new I.D.s. Alright, let’s do this. Here’s hoping we live,” Bodhi said with a sinking feeling. Over the past year he had been jittery, frantic that someone would figure out that he'd lived. He'd thought he was on the run. 

Now Bodhi appreciated just how much he had been hiding this whole time. He really wasn’t equipped to be in the light. Taking a fresh moment to curse the Rebel Alliance for making that video, Bodhi keyed in the hyperspace coordinates.

* * *

“I am not certain, but I think you will like Maz,” K-2SO said as they began their approach. 

“What makes you say that?” 

“She is peculiar.” 

There was silence in the shuttle for a moment.

“And?” Bodhi asked. 

“That’s it.”

* * *

Bodhi stared at the forger across the table from him. 

Pure white eyes stared out of dark blue skin as the forger ran his long fingers across the edge of the table. His voice was lilting as he spoke, Bodhi half-expected him to break into song at any moment. “So. I take it you did not find someone who would do the job for less?” 

Bodhi’s nose turned up in an involuntary gesture of disgust. “I did. But I didn’t like the look of them.” 

The forger chuckled. “Smart man. At least two here will sell you paperwork then turn around and sell the same to the Empire.” 

The eight or so fat tentacles that sat on the man’s head writhed in...amusement? Bodhi breathed through his nose to calm the churning in his stomach. He sensed that he was in for the Bor-Gullet flavor of nightmares again soon. 

Bodhi took one more slow breath in through his nose and folded his arms. “So, I need to get off the radar. Ideally, the Empire should think I’m dead." 

The forger shook his head. “With how high the bounty is on your head, there is no chance of that. Every potential death would be viewed with suspicion. I assume you do not actually want to die?” 

Bodhi glared at the man. 

“Yes, so, a false death is not the best of options. You need to hide for a time. I can supply you with a full body armor suit and identification paperwork that notes the suit is necessary for survival. No more facial recognition concerns.”

Bodhi nodded. “Your price is steep.” 

“It is. But not so steep as death. You will be poor, but alive. And you can always earn more money.”

* * *

Bodhi stared down at the new identification on his datapad. He tried to convince himself it was worth it. It gave him an excuse, a reason to hide his face, a chance to blend in.

It had wiped out nearly all their savings. It was going to be much harder now, keeping the shuttle fueled and Bodhi fed. They had enough supplies to last a month or so...but they hadn’t managed to pick up any repair materials…

Bodhi stared past the datapad, his mind lost in budgets and trying to balance the need to hide with the need to work. Maybe he could pick up a shipment here, cash in on that, and then-

There was a cough by his elbow, and Bodhi jumped. He looked down to see a tiny woman, her eyes made huge by lenses on her face, staring up at him. 

“Sorry, I always hate to interrupt a good pensive moment, but I need to speak with you.” 

Bodhi settled back down in the chair, angling towards the woman. “I’m willing to bet you’re Miss Kanata.”

“That’s a sucker’s bet, kid, but politeness will get you far. Just Maz, please. May I sit?” 

Bodhi nodded and gestured over to the open chair. She hopped up. 

“So nice to see new faces around here. I’m sure the rules were explained to you. Don’t start trouble, and I don’t care who pays it, but ten percent of every deal bartered here goes to me.”

“I already paid the ten percent to your steward. Were there any problems with the payment?” Bodhi said.

“No, not at all. You’ve been perfectly respectful of the rules. Unfortunately, other people haven’t.” 

Bodhi ran his tongue over his teeth, looking worried. 

“There’s about fifteen ships hovering outside the planet, waiting for you to make a break for it. Now, they’re respecting the neutral territory for now, but they’re already more blatant than they should be. It’s rude, and I’ll be remembering that.” 

Bodhi pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t keep the exhaustion out of his voice. “Of course. Thank you for the warning, Maz.” 

“Oh, don’t look so down, I wouldn’t bring you the bad news if I didn’t have way out of it for you.”

Bodhi looked up at her, raising an eyebrow. 

Maz continued, “The trouble is your shuttle. It’s heavily modified, and it gives you away too quickly. I’ve got an unmarked ship, and I’ll swap it for you.” 

Bodhi stiffened. “No, thank you, that’s not really an option.” 

“I know, I know, you’ve got your ship, it’s your dearest possession. But it’s not worth your life. Swap ships, I can give you a nippy little fighter, refund a fair difference from your negotiation fee. Or, I’ll hold the shuttle for you and you can come back to it once the heat has died off.” 

“No,” Bodhi said again, firm.

“It’s not a bad plan,” K-2SO finally spoke up, his voice coming out of a four-legged droid at Bodhi’s feet. 

Maz didn’t look at all surprised to hear clear speech coming out of a droid that resembled a canine more than a humanoid. Most people did. Bodhi suspected it was part of the reason K-2SO talked as much as he did in this body. 

“See, your pup knows what I’m talking about,” Maz said. 

Bodhi looked down at the droid. “I didn’t even think - do you want to split up? Most of the heat’s on me, not the shuttle. If I manage to get somewhere else, it might be safer for you.” 

“Of course I don’t want to split up. But if it keeps you safer...we could always meet up again later,” K-2SO said. 

“I feel like I’d be pointing out the obvious if I said that you could just take your droid with you. Want to fill me in on what I’m missing?” 

Bodhi pressed his lips together. K-2SO’s functioning wasn’t his secret to tell. 

“Do you remember a man named Aach who came through here about two years ago with an Imperial KX-series security droid?” K-2SO said.

“Lot of people come through here,” Maz said. 

“That makes it less likely that you would remember them, not impossible. You had a conversation with the droid.” 

Maz hopped off her chair and walked around so that she was mostly at eye level with K-2SO. “This is starting to sound familiar. It was an interesting conversation, if I recall correctly. We talked about whether or not droids could have a destiny.” 

“And K-2SO informed you that it didn’t really matter whether or not he had a destiny, he was going try to keep Aach alive regardless of destiny’s plans.” 

Maz looked over at Bodhi. “This isn’t Aach.” 

“No. I failed. I also died. I saved the galaxy while doing it, so you may not have been entirely wrong about the idea of ‘destiny.’ Then this man decided to shove my backup programming into a Zeta-class cargo shuttle.”

“Rude,” Maz said, looking disapprovingly at Bodhi. 

“It—it was an accident,” Bodhi stuttered, “and I have already apologized.” 

Maz tutted and turned back to K-2SO. “Well, Kaytoo, it’s lovely to see you again, That doesn’t explain why you’re in this body.” 

“It is a satellite. Most of my programming is still in the shuttle. I have not found a body capable of storing the full amount of my programming.” 

“I’m seeing the problem with my plans for a shuttle swap. Though, Kaytoo, I promise I’d take good care of you if you wanted to stick with me for a bit.” 

“You might want to do it, Kay,” Bodhi said, looking down at him. “We barely have enough money for fuel now, much less repairs. If something happens…” 

“Did you want me to go?” K-2SO asked, droid body pointing up at Bodhi. The droid’s ears were drooping. Bodhi wondered how much of it was actually under K-2SO’s control. “Because I will, if it would make you feel safer.” 

Bodhi tried to find it in himself to lie. To tell K-2SO that of course, he’d be fine, safer in a little fighter, he’d always wanted to fly one of those anyway. K-2SO would be safer here. But, after a year of arguing, talking, healing, fighting, flying, and saving each other’s lives, Bodhi couldn’t think of any way to lie that K-2SO would believe.

Bodhi sighed, running his fingers through his short hair. “Of course I wouldn’t feel safer. I’m safer with you than with anyone else.”

“Well then, it’s settled. We’ll stick together.” 

Bodhi heard metal shifting over the stone floor and looked down at K-2SO. The droid body’s tail was wagging back and forth. 

“Are you in control of that thing?” 

“No, it runs on autonomous systems and is very frustrating.” 

Bodhi chuckled. 

Maz looked carefully from one to the other. “Alright. Not a shuttle. I have some other ideas, though. Stick here for an hour or two. None of the circling scavengers will be so bold as to move before then. I’ll bring out dinner, it’s on the house.”

* * *

True to her word, Maz came back a little over an hour and a half later, holding a small box in one hand and a bag in the other. 

“First things first.” Maz set the box in front of Bodhi, walking around the table and climbing up in a chair. “This is for both of you, but you go on ahead and open it.”

Bodhi reached forward and took the box in his hands. He looked over at Maz, who nodded encouragingly. It was a slim metal box, lightweight, with a magnetic latch on one side. Bodhi popped the latch and opened the box. Nestled inside was what looked like a small in-ear headphone. Bodhi picked it up. He turned it over in his hands. 

There was one small button on the outside, the rest looked like it sat in the ear. It would be fairly inconspicuous. “Does this connect to a commlink?” Bodhi guessed. “Let me hear what the other person is saying privately?” 

“Better than that. It _is_ the commlink. Sends and receives. My friends who developed the tech gave me this to test it. It can pick up on subvocalizations and it’s got a range that’s near planetary. But, it can only be paired with one other device at a time. For someone like me, with lots of friends, that doesn’t work so well. But, for someone who is a bit more of a loner…” Maz gestured over at Bodhi. “It’s already paired with Kaytoo in the shuttle, just pop it in.” 

“I’m too grateful for the gift to take any offense at the ‘loner’ comment,” Bodhi said, tucking the comm into his ear.

There was a moment of extreme discomfort as the earbud expanded to fit the space and sent _something_ down his ear canal. Bodhi made a face.

“Yeah, first time’s a doozy,” Maz said, mirroring the face. 

“You could have warned me,” Bodhi protested, rubbing at the back of the ear where his head still protested that something _foreign_ was crawling down to his jawline and it _was not supposed to be in his head_.

“Eh, I could have. But I’m not that nice.”

“I believe she considered your facial response humorous. It was extreme,” K-2SO’s shuttle voice came in over his ear. The tone was quiet and soft, but still the clearest sound in the room. 

“That is...tremendous,” Bodhi said, slowly removing his hand.

“Kid, I foresee your life being very difficult as soon as you walk out the door. Least I can do is try to even the odds a little. Speaking of which,” she passed the bag over to him, “this one is just for you.” 

Bodhi popped open the bag, and looked inside. A slim black ankle sheath sat, with a knife nestled inside of it. Bodhi reached into the bag and, out of sight from the other patrons, pulled the knife out. It was a vicious, durable vibroblade, well balanced. This was a last-resort sort of knife. This was the knife that you used when either you were going to be dead, or the other person was. 

He looked at Maz and swallowed. “Thank you. I’m sure it will be useful.”

Maz gave a long sad sigh. She reached over and patted the side of Bodhi’s face. “Oh, kid, you are desperate to run, but you’ve got too much to fight for. It’ll pull you back every time. There’s no shame in that. You just do your best to live through this and give me a call to let me know how it all turns out. I’ve got faith in you.” 

Bodhi took a shaking breath in. “Right. Well, at least someone does.” 

“Hey,” K-2SO said in his ear. 

Bodhi gave a small but genuine smile. “Two someones, at that. Alright, I suppose it’s time to face the music.” 

Maz nodded. “Kaytoo already knows about his gift. It’s on the shuttle. Fly like the devil, kid.” 

Bodhi nodded at her, and left. 

(Much, much later, Maz would look into the eyes of a young man running from a First Order he had just barely escaped. He looked scared, sick, and exhausted. He also looked at the Force-touched girl like she had written his favorite book, cooked his favorite meal, and sung his favorite melody all at the same time. He was desperate to run, but he had too much to fight for.)

(Maz looked at Finn and knew, yes, she had seen his eyes in someone else’s face before.)

* * *

Bodhi arrived back at the shuttle to find Kitten, pink earmuffs pinned to either side of it, chittering angrily at— 

Bodhi looked up and made a noise he would not at all call a ‘squeak,’ nearly jumping out of his skin. 

“That is Maz’s present, do not be alarmed,” K-2SO’s voice came over the shuttle intercom.

“Kay,” Bodhi said, wonder coloring his voice. “That’s a KX-chassis. She gave you your body back.” 

“Not really. It’s not the same.” 

“It’s closer than anything else.” Bodhi walked up to it, circling around. “It wasn’t my body, you would know better, but it looks—” 

“It still needs some repairs to be functional. Don’t worry about it right now. I have a terrible plan to get us out of here.” 

Bodhi wanted to take time to tease out K-2SO’s strange lack of enthusiasm. The droid had been bemoaning the deficits of every single body he had tried since the day he woke up in the shuttle. Bodhi had been looking, but they had never found an empty KX-chassis. 

They had found a few full ones, but both Bodhi and K-2SO felt like it would be ethically dubious to yank another consciousness out to stick K-2SO’s in. 

Still, they needed to keep moving. “Your last plan was to blow up a Star Destroyer, and you didn’t call that one terrible,” Bodhi said, tearing his eyes away from the droid and climbing the ladder up to the cockpit. “I tremble to think what you might call an actual terrible plan.”

“You know our hyperdrive inhibitor?” 

“The nice machine that keeps us from being smashed to bits by unexpected things when we are travelling in hyperspace? Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, I’ve figured out how to shut it off.” 

“I know your plan is not to get us smashed to bits in space, so I’m failing to see how this is relevant.” 

“It is also the nice machine that keeps us from jumping to hyperdrive from atmosphere. You know. Atmosphere. Where the fifteen ships that want to capture us _aren’t_.”

“I see your point. That is a terrible plan.” 

“I know. I said that.” 

“Let’s do it.” 

“Excellent, I will plot us a short jump that is along the best-plotted hyperspace routes. It’s more predictable, but there is the least chance of planetary drift. We can turn on the inhibitor again and complete a longer jump from there. Assuming we don’t get smashed to pieces. The odds of that are—” 

“I would really rather not know. Right. Well, it’s always nice to make a new reckless mistake instead of the same old ones.”

“This will not be your first time jumping without a hyperspace inhibitor.” 

“I think I would remember—” 

“How else do you think Cassian got us off of Jedha before the explosion caught us?”

“That...bastard.” Bodhi always had wondered how Cassian had made that jump. It had never occurred to him that he would be so reckless. “He could have killed us!” 

There was silence from the console. Bodhi winced and tipped his head. “But the explosion definitely would have killed us. Good call, Cassian.” 

“That’s better,” K-2SO said. “I have the hyperspace plot.” 

“Well,” said Bodhi, “here goes nothing.” 

He pulled the lever and the blue sky twisted to black and blurred into stars.


	5. In Which a Number of Difficult Conversations Occur

* * *

“And then the bastard leapt to hyperdrive from atmo. Last I saw of him. He’s probably dust now, spread out across three different systems, pulling a dumb stunt like that.” Maz finished her story, crossing her arms and looking at the tableful of pilots. 

Evaan Verlaine had the feeling Maz wasn’t telling the whole story. She wasn’t sure why. Verlaine glanced around the table, noting a furrow on Janson’s face. She wasn’t the only one who thought the story was incomplete. 

“Well,” Janson said, leaning in with his trademark smile, “that’s the story you’ve told every bounty hunter that came through here looking for a piece of him. But we’re different. Why don’t you tell us a little more of the tale?”

“And what makes you different?” Maz asked.

“I don’t buy your act. You liked this guy. Reckless son-of-a-bitch, but that’s your type. And we’re his friends. We’re trying to help him out,” Janson said, confident, sympathetic.

Another lens slammed down over Maz’s left eye, distorting it further. She peered at Janson through it. Janson leaned back, looking a little disturbed. 

Maz snorted. “I’ve seen your type before.” She spun and looked at Verlaine. “Why are you here?”

Verlaine’s eyes widened. She had barely said a word to Maz the whole evening. Verlaine glanced around the table, saw the pilots looking back at her. She gave a little shrug to them, then looked back at Maz. 

Maz pointed at Janson. “That one will sell me a lie just for the joy of spinning a tale.” Janson made a noise of affront. 

Maz ignored him and turned, pointing at Moonsong. “Practical one there, she’ll lie to me, but just to get what she needs.” Moonsong gave a grunt of acknowledgement and raised her glass to Maz. 

Moving along, Maz pointed at Raner. “Your ringleader here won’t lie, but his narrow interpretation of his duty will get in the way of telling me what I actually need to know.” Raner said nothing, just crossed his arms and looked at her. 

Unperturbed, Maz turned to Verlaine, looking her straight in the eye, left eye still larger than the right. “You’re driven by your heart, and I have half a chance of getting a straight answer out of you. So, flygirl, tell me why you’re here.” 

“Verlaine,” Raner warned. 

Verlaine didn’t look at him, kept her gaze on Maz. “You’ve figured out who he is, haven’t you? The wanted posters are everywhere. You know what he did. Why the Empire wants him.” 

Maz gave a little nod. Her voice lowered. “Bodhi Rook. Hair’s a little shorter, now.” 

Verlaine took a slow breath in. “I’m Alderaanian.”

“Ah,” Maz said. “I’m sorry.” 

Verlaine nodded, eyes dry. She had spent her tears a long time ago. “He’s one of the only people who tried to stop the weapon before it destroyed my home. He forced the issue, made the Rebellion chase his crew to Scarif. Without him, the weapon still stands. He gave me my vengeance. Trying to get him to safety is the least I can do.” 

Maz gave a soft ‘hm.’ She reached into her satchel, pulled out a small datapad, and handed it to Verlaine. “Might find something interesting there. Don’t look at it in here. Too many eyes.” Maz walked off. 

The pilots filed back to their ships, huddling around the datapad once a sweep showed the area was clear. 

“Shiiiiit,” Moonsong drawled, looking down at the datapad. “His shuttle’s hyperspace signature. Now that’s useful.”

“You really think she hasn’t given this to anyone else?” Janson asked.

“Like you said, she liked him. And she’s good at reading bullshit. We might be the first she’s given this to,” Raner said, tapping the screen. “Nice work, Verlaine.”

“I just told the truth,” she said. 

“I know. Nice work. Alright, let’s work out a pattern sweep, see if we can find his tail.”

* * *

Three hours outside of Anoat, and Bodhi was nearly done getting ready. Bodhi held up the last piece of the helmet and with a snap-hiss it attached to the rest of it. He shook his head, trying to get used to the reduced peripheral vision out of the helmet. He found his small mirror, looked in it. Head-to-toe in body armor, helmet on top. 

“I look...almost intimidating,” Bodhi said, his voice distorted by the mechanisms in the helmet. 

“Good. Nobody will know it is you,” K-2SO said in his ear. 

Bodhi snorted at that, knelt down and made sure the vibroblade was tucked into his boot. He drew it, flipped it around in his hand, then tucked it away again. 

“You slept in your boots last night. With the knife,” K-2SO noted. 

Bodhi grunted. “Old habit. Never know when we’re going to run into danger. Reminds me of childhood.” 

“Childhood?” 

“On Jedha. It was home, but it wasn’t safe. Kept a dagger in my boot then, too.” Bodhi let out a soft sigh. “What messed-up childhood...” 

They stayed on Anoat a week and two days before the local shipping companies had an issue with Bodhi trying to rustle up work and ran him out of town.

* * *

Bodhi woke with a start, covered in sweat and gasping. He sat up in bed, curled his knees to his chest, wrapped around himself. He let his hand trail down to the handle of the knife, patted it, felt reassured. 

K-2SO’s DUM-series droid body came into the room. In his ear, Bodhi heard, “Are you alright? Your nightmare did not follow the normal pattern. I was unable to interrupt it before it became acute.” 

Bodhi shuddered a little, forced himself to relax. “Different nightmare than usual. I was hiding and people were looking for me. I had to be quiet, or they would kill me. And no matter what I did, I wasn’t quiet enough and…” Bodhi trailed off. He unfolded, swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Haven’t had that one in years.” 

He sidled his way along the edge of the bed and out into the main hold. As he passed the toolkit he grabbed it. “It makes a nice change from the tentacle nightmares, at least,” he said, trying for casual.

“Zero nightmares is the preferable amount of nightmares,” K-2SO said, his body following Bodhi. “What are you doing now?” 

“Figured I’d work on the KX unit for a while. It’s not that far off from being functional.” 

“You don’t need to do that.” 

Bodhi walked up to the large black body. He pulled open the chest flap and reached in, beginning to work. “Well, as you’ve mentioned many times, it’s my fault you’re stuck in a shuttle. Sooner we get this working, the sooner you can have your old body back.” 

K-2SO was silent a suspiciously long time. Bodhi kept working. Finally, K-2SO said, “Maybe I don’t want…” He paused for a long moment and didn’t seem inclined to resume talking.

Bodhi pulled his hand out of the chest and reached for a tool. “Don’t want…?”

“Don’t want a sleep deprived person working on my chassis. You need to sleep.” 

_Heavy boots, marching along the floor. Bodhi huddled into a ball, tucked into a corner, under a bed. He was small. He couldn’t fight them. Small and weak and if he wasn’t quiet enough they would—_

Bodhi shook his head. “Not getting back to sleep tonight.” 

“Fine. I’ll get the caf.”

When K-2SO returned with the caf, Bodhi sat down and took the mug. “Kay, if they catch me alive, it’s going to hurt. They won’t kill me quickly.” 

“That is an unfortunate but likely outcome,” K-2SO said. 

“There’s really no point in surrendering. It won’t make things hurt less. We just have to hide as long as we can, and fight until the end. Try to make it impossible for them to take me alive.”

“Your analysis is sound. Is there a conclusion you are drawing from this?”

Bodhi stared at his mug for a long moment. His hands clenched around it as he took a deep breath and found the courage to say aloud, “Kill me first, Kay. I hope it doesn’t come to that but...if it does....open the shuttle hatches, shoot me, whatever.”

“It won’t come to that,” K-2SO said.

“There’s no way that’s what your analysis says,” Bodhi responded. 

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not coming to that because they have to go through me to get to you.”

Bodhi nodded. “I know. It’s just...I refuse to die as their object lesson. So, if it comes to that...”

“I do not want to agree to this. However, in the unlikely event I am not dead first...they won’t get you.” 

Bodhi tipped his head back, letting it thunk softly against the wall of the shuttle. “Thank you. I know it’s a rotten thing to ask but...thank you.”

* * *

Quell was a planet that might have, once upon a time, been considered beautiful. The Clone Wars battle fought in its clouds had left the wreckage of ships scattered across the planet. The ships had left chunks of heavy metals and clouds of toxic gas, fuel cells cracking and poisons slipping into the water. What little value Quell had left was in salvage. 

Bodhi was exhausted, helmeted head between his hands as he looked over at the pile of scrap he had managed to pull from the downed cruiser. His legs and feet hurt, his arms trembled, and he was starving. 

“You should be done,” K-2SO said in his ear. 

“No,” Bodhi said, gasping a little, fighting his suit’s air recycling to get more air into his lungs. “There’s some useful stuff further back, I can grab it. I just need a moment.” 

“Bodhi, you’re nearly collapsing. It’s time to be done,” K-2SO insisted. “We have enough scrap to sell for supplies now. This planet is toxic and making you sick. I hate it.” 

“The sickness will pass. The suit blocks most of it. If we can stay here long enough the Empire might forget about us.” 

“No. I’m done watching you vomit. Your caloric intake is too low. We are leaving.”

“Fine,” Bodhi said. He didn’t really have the will to fight that decision. He hated the planet too.

They left Quell after a week and a day.

* * *

“Hooper, I’m getting worried, he’s not doing well,” Raner said, his projection flickering in front of Mika. 

“What's going on?” She put her forearms on the table, leaning toward the projection. 

“He’s taking odd jobs, scrap hunting for money, sleeping rough. We’ve found evidence that he’s taken out at least seven bounty hunters that have gone for him.”

Mika leaned forward, mouth pressed against her fist as she thought. “Seven. Shit.” 

Raner gave a tired twist of his mouth. “We were able to eliminate a nasty fellow with a taste in poisons. So, one less for Rook there.” 

Mika snorted. “I’m impressed. Fully trained squadron and this guy and his shuttle are putting you to shame.” 

Janson’s flickering face shoved in next to Raner’s. “Come on now, Meeks, to be fair, they’re actually going after him.” 

“It’s Hooper. _Chief_ Hooper,” Mika snapped in fine military form. She gave Janson a brief glare before turning back to Raner. “No luck getting ahead of him?” 

Before Raner could answer, Janson continued, “Alph calls you Mika though, and he’s like, fourteen.” 

“Nineteen,” Alph yelled, irritated. 

“See, he’s young enough to think that makes a difference.” Janson looked sad. 

“Alph cracked the Imperial Redhand Protocols. And he manages the my database. I _like_ Alph.”

“I’m hurt—” Janson was cut off as Raner shoved him out of the frame.

“Apologies. We’re all a little punchy. We just...express it differently.”

Mika grunted. “Right. Well, I suppose, under the circumstances, I can skip the ‘back in my day, whelps had respect’ rant I had lined up. Shame...it’s a good one. Anyway, back to Rook.”

Raner snorted. “We’re trying to get ahead, or even just catch up. But he’s staying in places barely a week now before moving on. Hyperspace trail lets us know where he’s going, but getting there before…” 

“It’s a crap job. I’ve been running the possibilities, but we just don’t know enough about this guy to establish a pattern. I’ll keep watching the channels though.” 

“That’s all we can ask. We’ll let you know if anything new comes through. Raner out.” The holoprojection cut off. 

“I’m still not convinced you actually like me. I think you just hate your database,” Alph said from across the room, eyes tracking and noting various news reports. 

“You’re probably right. Let me know if we get any hits from the news. I’m going to comb EnforcementCore data again.” 

“Mika…” Alph trailed off. Mika looked over at him. He gave an uncomfortable shift, and looked up at her, a plea in his brown eyes. “We’ll get to him in time, right?” 

Mika looked down at Alph and suddenly felt very tired. “We might not. And it’ll be a tragedy. But it won’t be because we didn’t try everything we could think of.”

* * *

“I know where to go next,” Bodhi said, charting the hyperspace route. 

“That is a long trip. Do we have sufficient credits to replace the fuel supply?” 

“I’ll skip some meals.” 

“That is a horrible solution.” 

“It’s important. It’s worth it, to me.” Bodhi tightened his hand into a fist, then forced himself to relax it. 

“Why?”

“I’ll explain when we get there.”


	6. In Which Our Heroes Are Snappish

* * *

“It’s not right,” K-2SO insisted.

“I don’t know _why_!” Bodhi tossed the spanner down on the floor, where it made a loud clatter. “I have been working on this body forever now, and I’m telling you, _I don’t see anything wrong with it!_ ” 

“I’m telling you, it’s not right.”

“OH MY—” Bodhi cut himself off with an inarticulate shout of frustration, raking his fingers down the front of his face. “Fine. Fine. If you can give me a more specific reason why it’s not right, I’ll do something about it. In the meantime, I’m just going to leave it connected to the shuttle. Maybe you can do a diagnostic or something.” 

“Acceptable.” 

“Good,” Bodhi snarled. He reached down and picked up the spanner. In a fit of anger he slammed it back into the tool box. 

“We are approaching the hyperspace drop point soon, if you would like to return to the pilot’s seat,” K-2SO announced.

“ _Okay,_ ” Bodhi snapped. “I’ll be there.” 

As he walked over to the seat he took a deep breath in. Out. Another. He settled into the chair. “I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated. I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just...there’s so much going wrong. I just want one thing to go right.”

“Anger and frustration are standard human reactions to negative circumstances. Expressing them is healthy. There is no need to apologize.” 

“Still. I do.”

“Then I accept. Additionally, the droid body repair isn’t going wrong. It’s just...complicated. I’ll let you know when I have found a better way to describe it.” 

“Alright.” 

Bodhi felt the ship give its familiar little shudder as it dropped out of hyperspace. The stars shifted back to points, and a blue-black-green world with a spectacular ring around it hung against them. 

“Arrived at Lah’mu. Are you ready to explain why we are here?”

Bodhi looked out at the planet, felt nostalgia wash over him. Nostalgia for a place he had never been. “It was Galen’s home. With his wife and Jyn. For a while. When he was hiding from the Empire. I just wanted to see it for myself. He always spoke well of it.” Bodhi took in the look of it from space. “I can see why.” 

“Oh. I understand why you wanted to come here. This is a matter of sentiment, isn’t it? Very well. Do you know where his house was?” 

“Hm?”

“Because that’s clearly the place with the greatest sentimental value. So we should set down there.” 

Bodhi smiled through the sudden emotion in his throat. “Pull up the scanners, let’s see what we can find.”

* * *

The homestead had burned. Galen told Bodhi he had been forced to watch. Bodhi stepped out of the shuttle and found himself drawn over to the charred walls. 

Bodhi had known Galen over a year, sleeping with him for most of that time, before he found out Galen had been married and that he had a child. The news didn’t shock him. Galen had always seemed reserved...sad, somehow. Bodhi had always assumed there was tragedy in his past. 

The sunken doorway to the homestead seemed stable enough. The metal and stone building looked structurally sound. Bodhi stepped through it, entered the front room, wandered past a burned out circular couch. He could almost see Galen sitting next to his wife, Jyn playing in the center. 

Bodhi remembered the heat of Galen’s breath at his ear, music in his quarters drowning out anyone trying to listen in, as he recounted softly the day he was taken. Galen told the whole story, watching his wife die, knowing he’d probably never see his daughter again. Galen shared his relief at that, confessed how grateful he was that the Empire never held her. 

Bodhi walked over into the kitchen area. He picked up a pot, wondering how many meals Galen had cooked in it. How many conversations flowed between him and Lyra and Jyn while he tended some sort of stew in this pot. 

After that first, momentous sharing, Bodhi remembered he was breathless at the trust Galen was showing. This was dangerous. Nearly treason. When Galen pulled back, he looked deeply sad, and a little afraid. Galen was no fool, he knew he had given Bodhi enough rope to hang him with. 

A small bedroom in the alcove off to the side. The bedframe, burned. A pile of stuffed animals off to the side of it. One managed to escape the charring. It was a creature Bodhi didn’t recognize with big eyes and floppy ears. Bodhi picked it up. He wondered what Jyn had named it. Whether or not she had loved it. 

In the moment after Galen’s sharing, hurting Galen had been the furthest thing from his mind. All Bodhi could think was how much he loved him. Loved his sad eyes and his kind humor and his overwhelming trust. He reached out, tugged Galen close again, and tucked Galen’s head into the crook of his neck. Bodhi felt Galen start to tremble in his arms, and Bodhi held him as he shook, crying near-silent tears as he grieved his wife and child.

Bodhi felt an echo of Galen’s tears now, as he found an undamaged holochip, tucked back in a box. He pushed the button on the top and a picture flickered out, Galen, pressing a kiss against Lyra’s cheek, Lyra, smiling down at an infant Jyn in her arms. He closed his eyes and looked away. It hurt badly, seeing the family so happy. 

It was so unfair, how everything had turned out.

Bodhi realized now that it had likely been a test, of course. Trusting Bodhi with the memories of his family was important, but if Bodhi had proved unfaithful with that trust it was a loss that could be recovered from. And when Bodhi had proved himself reliable with the smaller trusts, Galen gave him the message, sent him running to Saw. 

Still. Test or not, the emotion, that was real. The grief, the sorrow, the comfort. All real. The love was real. 

That was enough, for Bodhi.

* * *

“Bodhi, I do not wish to interrupt your nostalgia, but I have found something that appears important,” K-2SO said in his ear. 

“What’s going on?” 

“It would be easier to explain in the shuttle.” 

Bodhi made his way back out of the homestead, taking the stuffed animal and the holochip with him. He made his way up the shuttle ramp.

Kitten gave a happy chirp to see him, scooting over. Bodhi smiled, knelt down, and removed the earmuffs from around Kitten. Kitten gave an expectant twirl, settling down in front of Bodhi again. He took Jyn’s stuffed animal, and affixed it to the top of Kitten. “This was Jyn’s, when she was a child. I...I think she would have liked you. You have a similar killer instinct. Keep it safe for me, okay?” 

Kitten gave a happy chirp and trundled off, the animal’s long ears flapping behind it as it rode on top of the cleaning droid. 

Bodhi couldn’t help but grin, looking after the two of them.

He set the holochip down on the small counter in the kitchenette and made his way up to the cockpit. The dash showed the sensor display, something highlighted about three hundred meters out from the shuttle. 

“What am I looking at?” 

“A human femur. Decay rates show that the human passed away between ten and fifteen years ago. There has been extensive scavenger damage. It seems likely that the human died somewhere nearby and was left unburied. I have also found a hipbone, collarbone, and skull. This sort of dating is difficult to determine, but I believe the remains were female.” 

“Lyra...Galen never knew what happened to her body. It wasn’t taken with them…” Bodhi trailed off, swallowing. 

“That seems to be the likely outcome. I know treatment of once-sentient corpses is an important ritual to organics. I felt it best to notify you.” 

“Krennic just left her to the scavengers. She deserved better than that.”

“At some point when you are feeling less emotional I would like to revisit the idea of ‘deserved’ in regard to no-longer-living individuals.”

“Noted. I...I’m surprised there’s anything left, fourteen years later.” 

“Bones are very durable. Not compared to durasteel, but nobody is perfect.” 

“I need to bury her.” 

“That will require a great deal of energy and time. Are you certain?” 

“Yes. I’m...I never knew her, but I loved someone that loved her. He told me stories about her. He’d do this, if he was here. So would Jyn. But they’re not. I...I might be the only person alive who remembers she existed.” Bodhi looked at the display. The bones marked were in a small gully up the side of the mountain. “Help guide me up there?” 

“Of course.”

* * *

In the end, K-2SO sent Bodhi up and down the mountainside and they found fifteen bones, all sun-bleached and scavenger-gnawed. Bodhi stored them carefully in a pack and stumbled his way back down the mountain. Exhaustion tore at him. Still, he was careful with the bones. He found his way down.

Bodhi stored the pack carefully and made for the shuttle. He was surprised to find a meal waiting on the table, freshly heated. 

“That looks like more than the food ration we set up says I should eat.” Bodhi said, sitting at the table and picking up his fork. 

“The ration was not designed to account for a day of physical labor. Eat.”

Bodhi ate, a little mechanical in his movements, chewing and swallowing without much energy. He rested his head on the small table for a moment. 

“Are you feeling sufficiently well?” K-2SO asked. 

“No. Force, I’m tired.” Bodhi splayed out his fingers on the table and forced himself up. “Okay, I can do this.” 

“You could rest tonight and do it tomorrow.” 

“I’m not sure how long it will take. I’d feel more...settled, I suppose, if I do it now. Put the ghosts to rest.” 

“There is no evidence of-” 

“Just a phrase, Kay. I’m just...getting things taken care of. Feels like the right thing to do.”

* * *

Bodhi found a nice spot next to a sleek black stone that would serve as a marker. The area felt peaceful. Felt right, for putting someone to rest. Bodhi picked up the shovel. He dug.

He dug until his palms blistered and the blisters bled. The stinging finally became impossible to ignore, and Bodhi sat down beside the grave and rested. He looked down at his hands. He ran some water over them, cleaning as best he could. He looked down at the hole. Not nearly big enough, but he couldn’t dig much more today. He’d try again tomorrow. 

There was a noise to his left, some large creature flickered in the corner of his eye, and Bodhi started. K-2SO should have warned him if something was coming close...he whirled in that direction, and was surprised to find…

“Kay!” 

K-2SO looked like the K-2SO Bodhi remembered from a lifetime ago. Impossibly tall, half-slouching, black chassis and glowing white eyes. He looked like the droid who had gone with Bodhi to steal a shuttle, who told Bodhi he had done well as he fired on the platform, clearing the way for Jyn and Cassian. 

“It worked?” Bodhi asked, standing up. 

Long black fingers curled around his shoulder, gently shoving Bodhi back to the ground. K-2SO picked up the shovel, walked over to the hole, and started digging again.

“It worked to a degree. I am still in the shuttle as well,” K-2SO answered. 

Bodhi took in a shaky breath. “You sound the same.” 

“I am not the same,” K-2SO snapped, his modulated voice showing a degree of range the shuttle’s comms were incapable of. 

“Of course not, I didn’t mean that—” 

“No. Now it is my turn to apologize. You are not to blame. I am processing things. It will take time before I am ready to speak about them.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be here when you’re ready.” Bodhi rested his wounded hands on his lap, and watched as K-2SO took the shovel to the dirt, turning over new ground. K-2SO was able to carve out vast chunks of dirt with easy-seeming swings. Bodhi watched carefully for signs of tics or mechanical failure. But all the joints ran smooth, and K-2SO seemed as solid in the body as he had been before he was turned into a shuttle. 

Bodhi had promised that he would work to find K-2SO a good body. Month after month had gone by and no body was ever good enough. None were even better than the shuttle. There was a worry that they would never find a droid body for K-2SO. And if something had happened to Bodhi...who else would care? Watching him now, Bodhi settled a little. It looked right. 

“Tell me about Lyra,” K-2SO said, abruptly.

Bodhi made a noise of surprise. “Why?”

“You said you are the last person to know. Tell me what Galen told you, and then we’ll know together.” 

“Yeah….yeah. Okay. Well. Lyra was a scientist. She was a geologist, studied rock formations with a particular focus on crystals...”

* * *

“I believe that the hole is sufficiently large. Scavengers will be unlikely to find any remains once it has been filled back in.” 

Bodhi stood up, looked down at the ground, rich black dirt carving a slice out of the green turf. “I think you’re right.” He picked up the pack that contained Lyra’s bones and lowered it carefully into the grave. He looked at it for a long minute, feeling that the action was incomplete.

“Now we fill it?” K-2SO asked.

“I think...I think we need to say something first. About her.” 

K-2SO’s white eyes pivoted over to his face, waiting. Bodhi cleared his throat. “Lyra Erso...Lyra Erso didn’t let anyone control her destiny. She chose her path and walked it to the end. We are grateful for her courage. It inspired courage in return.” Bodhi held out his hand for the shovel. He took it over to the pile of loose dirt, dug in, and poured a shovelful of loose dirt over the bag. “Whatever peace there is, may you have already found it.” 

Bodhi felt pain flare up in his hands and he handed the shovel over to K-2SO. He stood next to the grave until it filled. As K-2SO tamped down the last bit of dirt, Bodhi reached up and patted K-2SO’s elbow. “Thank you. I couldn’t have done it alone.” 

K-2SO nodded. “Is the ritual for handling the remains finished?”

“That’s one way to describe a funeral.”

“An accurate one.” 

“I - yes, it’s done. Mostly. I brought the plasma cutter out too, I’d like to carve a memorial. Something small. But, in the unlikely event that someone else comes this way...” Bodhi gave a little shrug. 

“They should know.” K-2SO inclined his head. “I will return the shovel to the shuttle, and make some dinner. You will eat it.” 

“Alright, Kay.”

* * *

GALEN ERSO

| 

LYRA ERSO

| 

JYN ERSO  
  
---|---|---  
  
Steadfast

| 

Defiant

| 

Victorious  
  
_Though your names may pass from history your actions never will._  
  
Bodhi was putting the final touches on the memorial stone when he heard K-2SO’s voice in his ear. “Bodhi, there is another shuttle approaching. It used the mountains to conceal its approach. Lambda class, Imperial. I do not believe we can make it through takeoff protocols in the time left.” 

“We’ll play it by ear, then. They probably want me alive.” Bodhi brushed the memorial with the tips of his fingers as he rose, allowing the pads to flow along the ridges. 

He walked a little ways away from the grave, toward the approaching shuttle. It landed a few dozen meters away from him. He faced the shuttle and waited as the ramp lowered and a middle-aged man walked out. Bodhi looked over at the pips on his shoulder. A lieutenant, clearly not a rising star of the Empire considering his age and the fact that he was out on a punishment post like Lah’mu. 

A squad of half a dozen stormtroopers came out behind the man, weaponry pointed at Bodhi.

“Mr. Rook. I’m so glad I caught you. You’re smaller than I expected. A stiff breeze could blow you away.” The man walked closer, his stormtroopers stayed behind, guns never wavering. “I have no doubt the rumors of your accomplishments are entirely undeserved. Still, skinny half-starved wastrel you may be, bringing you in will be quite the coup in my career. So thank you for the opportunity.” 

The man arrived, stopping barely an arm’s reach from Bodhi, keeping to the side, slightly, so his troopers had an uninterrupted line of fire. _‘Not entirely incompetent. Still sloppy to come this close.’_

“On your knees, Mr. Rook,” the man said. “Hands behind your back.” 

Bodhi clasped his hands behind his back, dropped first to one knee, then tucked the other one underneath. So. Sort of officer that thrived on petty humiliation. He had known his share of those. Bodhi decided to look embarrassed, angry. He closed his eyes and looked away. He heard the officer chuckle, proud.

_‘Fool,’_ Bodhi thought. The officer was so busy keeping track of Bodhi, he didn’t bother paying attention to Bodhi’s shuttle. Bodhi screwed his eyes shut tighter. 

“Good. Keep them closed,” K-2SO said, soft in his ear. Bodhi heard the whine of the laser spinning up, then the crack of it firing. Bodhi felt the heat rush his face while green brightness pressed against his eyelids. 

The officer next to him screamed. “My eyes!” 

Bodhi looked over at the shuttle. There was charring and a furrow of dirt where the stormtroopers once stood. He looked back up at the officer, letting the false anger fade from his face, replaced with a sense of smug satisfaction. 

“Who is on the shuttle?” the man demanded, face red with rage but his eyes still shut, one hand covering them. “The dossier said you worked alone!”

Bodhi, still on his knees, let his hands reach down into his boot, grabbed the handle of his knife. He shifted a little, tucking his left foot up under him. He gave a sick grin up at the sightless officer. “I don’t. But let’s just keep that between us.” In one smooth move he pushed up off the ground, drew his knife, and lunged at the stunned officer. He pulled the motion through and slit the man’s throat. 

The officer died screaming, blood feeding the black soil of Lah’mu.


	7. In Which Bad Things Get Even Worse

* * *

Bodhi didn’t bother rinsing the blood splatter off as he helped K-2SO strip the Lambda of supplies. K-2SO grabbed the fuel cells, Bodhi focused on food, shoveling it all into packs as quickly as he could. Ironic, the Lambda’s supplies would help keep them both moving. 

And they had to move. Bodhi had no doubt that one officer and six troopers was just about all the garrison Lah’mu had, but they couldn’t take chances. Packs full of food and fuel cells swapped out, Bodhi and K-2SO made for the shuttle. Bodhi grabbed the family photo off the counter. “I’ll be right back.” 

“We don’t have time”—K-2SO’s droid voice cut off, and continued over his comm—“and you’re gone.” 

“Won’t be long. Just need to say goodbye.” 

Bodhi jogged down to the grave. He set the holochip down on top of the memorial and pushed the button. The fuzzy picture of the family sprang into life above the stone. Bodhi bowed his head over the memorial. “You all deserve better. But I swear...we saved the damn galaxy. No matter what else happens...we did it.” Bodhi reached down and brushed the memorial again before slowly walking back to the shuttle.

* * *

Gina Moonsong gestured in a general circle. “Who the fuck is this guy?” 

“He’s more of a soft touch than I gave him credit for. This is freshly-carved. He killed someone, buried them, and carved a memorial,” Janson said, gesturing at the monument. He paused, rubbing his chin. “Actually, come to think of it, that’s brutal.”

“I don’t think he killed them,” Verlaine said. “Think he came here to bury them? Maybe?”

“Besides, why would he bury some of the corpses and not all of them?” Moonsong pointed over at the charred trooper corpses, and down at the officer with a slit throat by her feet. “Speaking of which, why did he kill some people with his cannon, and stab this one? This one must have really pissed him off.” 

“Verlaine, grab that chip, make a copy, get it to Chief Hooper. Maybe she and Razola can unravel the mystery somewhat,” Raner called from where he stood by the trooper corpses. He looked at the ground, off into the distance to the left, then over to the officer. “Moonsong, you’re on the right track, but asking the wrong question.” 

“So what’s the right question? And if you say ‘figure it out’ I will hit you, commanding officer or not.” 

Raner gave a short chuckle. “Insubordinate. Look at the angle of the fire. Look at the charring. Shuttle would have been…”

Moonsong pointed off to the left. “There. Probably a few hundred meters back.” 

Raner gestured at the officer. “You think he stabbed the officer, ran to his shuttle, then fired on the troopers who just sat there, all lined up for him?” 

“Someone else was here,” Moonsong said slowly, realization dawning. “Someone on his side.”

“Whoever it is is either a new pickup or staying off the radar. We haven’t seen any signs of companions.”

“Aside from the droids,” Moonsong pointed out.

“Hm. The droids...he’s got a DUM-series repair, those things wouldn’t be able to work a shuttle...someone said he had a dog-thing with him at Maz’s right? No hands on that…”

“Astromech could do it,” Janson offered, walking closer. “We’re talking about the weird angles on the blast, right? I know R2-L7 could make the shot in my X-Wing, easy.”

“Astromech isn’t designed to be hooked up to a Zeta, though. Certainly not designed to fly it. Maybe it’s a heavily modified droid...”

“Mystery after mystery, with this guy.” 

Verlaine walked over to the group holding out the comm. “I’ve got Razola on.”

The comm crackled, and Alph’s voice came through. “I can solve at least some of your mystery. That’s the Erso family, alright. Rook had contact with Galen while he was in the Empire, and flew with Jyn in Rogue One. Now, here’s the bit that solves the mystery - turns out, we have some footage of Jyn explaining that she lost her family on Lah’mu. Her dad was taken by the Empire, her mom was shot. So...Lah’mu isn’t actually a bad place for a family memorial.”

“But why did he need to set up the memorial in the first place? Middle of running from half the kriffin’ bounty hunters in the galaxy, not to mention the entire Empire and he makes a pit stop on some backwater and sets up a memorial? It’s not practical,” Moonsong said, exasperation creeping into her voice. 

“He’s reaching the end of his rope, he’s not thinking about practical,” Verlaine said, looking serious. 

Raner nodded. “He’s putting his ghosts to rest before he joins them.” 

“He’s going to have to wait on being a ghost, though.” Alph’s voice was full of determination. “We’re going to get to him first.” 

“Fuck right we are!” Janson said. 

Moonsong privately thought that all the hoo-rah in the world wouldn’t count for anything if Rook got shot. And they couldn’t help him if they couldn’t catch him. 

She turned and started walking to her ship.

* * *

Bodhi sat down. That was probably a mistake. He wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he’d be able to make it back to standing. His legs ached, he could feel his pulse pound in his joints as his feet throbbed. His back felt like it was made up of one solid knot, with deep aches along his shoulder joints. His arms had long since started trembling from exertion, and his damaged hands felt like they were on fire. 

A Chagrian man tossed a pre-packaged meal down in front of him. “Ten minutes to eat,” they rasped, flicking out their forked black tongue before moving along to the next laborer. 

Bodhi and K-2SO had landed in Drog VI’s wilderness and Bodhi had hiked into the nearest industrial port. He had spent the day doing non-stop loading and unloading for a shipping company willing to pay under the table for some help. 

He stared down at the meal in his hands, and he slid it into his pack. He needed to keep his helmet on. Besides, nothing would stay down, right now. Still. He needed the calories.

Bodhi spent five of his ten minutes breathing hard, trying to brace himself for another set of hours lifting, shoving, hurting. It would be worth it, though. The day should pay enough credits that they could get enough food to keep them going for another few weeks. If he could keep up the strength and work a few days in a row, they could even pick up some much needed supplies. Restock their medkit, maybe even pick up some extra repair parts or…

“Bodhi,” K-2SO said in his ear. “Communications just picked up talk from the nearest docking bay. There are strangers in town, and they’re asking about new arrivals.” 

“Fuck,” Bodhi said, low enough only the comm could pick it up. 

“Agreed. Seventy-eight percent chance they will locate you in the next two hours.” 

Bodhi’s shoulder’s slumped. “Yeah. I know what I need to do.” 

Bodhi creaked to his feet, went over to the Chagrian and said, “Emergency came up, I have to go. I need my half-day’s pay.” 

“The agreement was for the full day. You walk, you forfeit your credits.” 

“Please,” Bodhi said, “I’ll come back and work later, I just need to-”

“If you need to leave, leave, but don’t expect pay.” 

Bodhi looked at the Chagrian a long moment. The man had already dismissed him, moving his gaze along to the laborers that were still eating. Eventually, the Chagrian looked back at Bodhi. “Lunchtime’s over. Either get out of here, or get back to work.” 

Bodhi left, slipped his way out of town, and started the long hike back to the shuttle.

* * *

Bodhi was malfunctioning. K-2SO watched him through the shuttle’s cameras. He sat in the pilot’s seat, eyes unfocused in front of him. Kitten chittered at him and rammed into his boot. Bodhi didn’t respond. 

“Bodhi,” K-2SO tried again. “Bodhi, we need to leave.” 

Bodhi seemed to respond more positively when K-2SO used his KX-series chassis. K-2SO climbed that body up to the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot’s seat. “We need to figure out where we are going next,” K-2SO tried, using the KX’s voice. 

Bodhi still didn’t move. However, after a long second, he finally spoke. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

“Bodhi, that is maladaptive code. Find a more productive way of phrasing that.” 

Bodhi didn’t respond.

K-2SO waited a half-minute, each second dragging for an eternity. “Bodhi, we need to leave.”

Bodhi didn’t still respond. Frustrated, K-2SO ran some calculations, found the safest planet he could out of the available options, and set the course. 

Bodhi wasn’t sleeping well, wasn’t eating enough, and there was nothing K-2SO could do about it right now. He looked gaunt, skin stretched thin over bones, dark bruising under his eyes. K-2SO reviewed emotional maintenance protocols, and tried to find one that would apply to this situation.

* * *

“We understand you had a new laborer with you today,” Raner said, looking at the Chagrian. 

“Odd man. Worked half a day. Something spooked him a few hours back. Left at lunch, didn’t return. Forfeited his pay. He in trouble?” 

“No,” Raner said, giving the Chagrian ten credits and his comm code. “We just had a message for him. Let us know if he comes around again, hm?” 

“Sure thing.” 

As soon as they were out of earshot, Janson turned to Raner. “We might actually catch him this time.” 

“I doubt it,” Raner said. “He can’t afford to skip credits, at this point. If he left, he’s not coming back. Still. Worth a try.” He pulled out his communicator. “We found where he was, but he ran, just a few hours back. Verlaine, sweep the planet, see if you can find any comm signals in the wilderness. Moonsong, you’re in the black. Find his hyperspace signature, let us know immediately. We’re closing in on him. Raner out.” 

Verlain and Moonsong’s affirmations crackled through his comms and Janson spoke, “Hey, boss?”

Raner grunted.

“We landed a few hours ago.” 

“We did. Think he had eyes at the port?” 

“He’d be an idiot not to. I figured that the X-Wings made it pretty damn apparent we weren’t bounty hunters, but…wish we had waited a little longer before landing, now. Or gotten here sooner. It’s so-” Janson broke off, clenching his hands into fists. 

“It’s infuriating. We’re close. And we still might lose him,” Raner admitted. 

“No. Look, if we’ve learned anything about this guy, it’s that he’s a survivor. He’ll manage long enough for us to bring him in. Just you watch.”

* * *

Bodhi had stared, blank-eyed and lifeless, at the viewscreen of the shuttle for forty-five minutes. Then, without saying a word to K-2SO, he had gotten up from the pilot’s seat and gone into his small bedroom, shutting the door. He hadn’t come out. 

K-2SO resolved to give Bodhi space to rest. His current behaviors were worrying, but not entirely unreasonable considering his reduced caloric intake and increased physical activity. It seemed likely that he needed a period of decreased stress to recover. 

K-2SO dropped out of hyperspace on the outside of a small asteroid belt that was home to a mining colony. He was in the middle of pretending to be an organic negotiating the use of the shuttle as cargo transport when three Z-95 Headhunters picked up from a nearby planet and began heading for the asteroid belt. 

K-2SO cut off negotiations and pushed the shuttle through the asteroids. He attached himself to the far side of one and powered off all non-critical systems. 

Odds of escaping the battle without critical damage to the shuttle were much better if Bodhi was piloting. K-2SO could fly the shuttle and he could shoot the weaponry, but data consistently showed that his performance was better when he didn’t have to split his attention. 

Which meant that he needed to wake Bodhi up. He sent his droid body over to Bodhi’s room and nudged his way through the door. Bodhi wasn’t asleep. He lay down on his bed, eyes staring across at the wall. 

K-2SO moved his way into Bodhi’s line of sight, and crouched down as far as he could in the small space.

“Bodhi. I need your help.” 

“I’m no help.” 

“Bodhi, you are skilled at many things. Including piloting. I need a pilot.”

Bodhi shifted slightly, twisting his head so it was hidden in his pillow. “I can’t. I can’t do anything. I’m too tired.” 

“Bodhi, you will get the chance to rest but right now I need—” 

“No. I can’t.” Bodhi sounded broken. “There’s nothing left, Kay. I’m done. Just let me stay here.” 

K-2SO had been splitting his attention between speaking with Bodhi and watching for any Headhunters that wandered into view. One did, searching, but it clearly hadn’t found the shuttle. K-2SO shifted his attention away from Bodhi, warmed up the weapon’s systems. After a tense moment waiting for them to come online, K-2SO targeted the plasma cannon and fired on the Headhunter, watched it explode. 

More would be coming any minute. 

“Please,” K-2SO said, shifting back to Bodhi. “I can’t shoot and fly at once.”

The shuttle jolted. Another Headhunter had found the shuttle, managed to get strafing fire onto it. K-2SO tried one more time, reaching out his hand and touching Bodhi’s shoulder. “We’ve been partners for a long time now. I don’t know how much longer we have, but I am not ready for it to end. I’m going to go fight now. It will go better if you come with me.” 

And with that K-2SO turned his attention back to the remaining Headhunters. 

He flew, dodging in and out among asteroids while trying to stay ahead of the worst of the fire. He spun around one bulk, took a chance, and shifted forward on autopilot while plotting out return fire. 

The shuttle shook as a shot made it through the shields. Scorching fire down the side of his flank made K-2SO very glad he didn’t have pain sensors in the shuttle. He was less glad that he no longer had one of his laser cannons. 

He shifted back to thrusters and gunned the engine, frustrated that he couldn’t return fire. He couldn’t run forever. 

He focused in on the asteroid field, trying to read the pattern of shifting rocks, trying to find some way to get far enough ahead to power up the plasma cannon for another shot. There wasn’t an opportunity for that, but if he...K-2SO took a turn around one of the asteroids, reversed his direction and wound up pointing straight at one of the Headhunters. Ion, then laser, and the Headhunter was dust. 

Just one left. 

It was behind him. K-2SO felt the impact of fire on his tail. He ran damage assessment as he frantically dodged away from the Headhunter. Lost another laser cannon. Some damage to environmental systems. Not the atmosphere, though. Bodhi was still safe, for now. 

He couldn’t shake the last Headhunter. He tried to keep the shields fully powered but they had sustained enough damage that he couldn’t. Thrusters still worked, as did sublights, and he pushed them as hard as he could. 

It wasn’t enough, glancing laser fire kept just barely missing something critical. He was going to have to figure out how to shoot back. Taking a risk, he charted a course through clear space, 56% chance that it would remain clear space. He set the course on autopilot and worked to get a lock on the ship with his two remaining laser cannons. He would be fine, as long as the space remained clear. 

It didn’t. 

There was an asteroid he couldn’t have accounted for. Its slow drift took it out from behind the rock hiding it and right across their path. 

K-2SO ran his attention back through the circuits, trying to take back control of the piloting system. 

He wasn’t going to be fast enough. Calculating speed and angles, it all told him one thing. They were going to crash. There wasn’t anything K-2SO could do to stop it.


	8. In Which Decisions Are Made

* * *

K-2SO flew through calculations in microseconds, but the answer was always the same. They had seconds left, and he couldn’t activate the thrusters quickly enough. The shuttle raced toward the asteroid and their run was going to end in a shower of dust. 

The thrusters moved without K-2SO’s input. With more finesse than he could muster on his best day, the shuttle pivoted into a vertical and easily crested the asteroid. The back thrusters burned, increasing the shuttle’s speed more and more as it pulled in a tight orbit around the asteroid. 

“Get ready to fire,” Bodhi said. 

If K-2SO had an organic body, he had no doubt he would be collapsing in relief. Maybe crying. Maybe shouting. Organic reactions were complicated. 

Instead, he said, “Finally.” 

“Sorry,” Bodhi replied. 

The ship flew out the other side of the asteroid, nose-to-nose with the last Headhunter. The two remaining laser cannons spat out green fire in quick succession, followed by the ship-shaking plasma cannon burst. 

The last Headhunter was nothing but a rapidly-expanding cloud of debris. There was a long moment of silence on the shuttle. It was broken by Bodhi gasping for breath.

“Fuck. Fuck. I—I almost got us killed.” Bodhi said, hands shaking as he took them off the flight controls. “Thank the Force you were still in the shuttle. You kept us alive. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Bodhi said, hands shaking worse. He clenched them into fists, winced in pain, then uncurled them. 

“It worked out acceptably well....Bodhi, I need to tell you—I did not want to be a shuttle.” 

“I know, I know, I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. If there’s something you need to transfer over into the chassis entirely just let me know—” Bodhi babbled.

“Let me finish talking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I did not want to be a shuttle _before_. However, I have grown accustomed to having flight controls and sensors and heavy weaponry. The longer I was in the shuttle, the less confusing the controls were. I now consider it my primary body. However, the KX-chassis is close enough to my old body that it was disorienting to be back in it. It is complicated. I still have not resolved it. But I like being a shuttle, now. I do not plan to give it up, even with the KX-body.” 

“O—okay.”

“However, it is still difficult for me to fly and shoot. I am grateful for your piloting skills.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Bodhi said again.

“You were there in time.” 

“I almost wasn’t. I’m sorry.” 

“Bodhi, I accept your apology. Stop reissuing it.”

* * *

“I know you’ve asked me not to apologize anymore, but I’m really struggling with that right now.” Bodhi rested his head in his hands, flinched, and lifted his head up again, settling his hands in his lap. 

“You have already apologized sufficiently. I have accepted. Further apologies strain the social contract.” 

“It’s hard not to keep apologizing when every new scan reveals something else that’s wrong with the shuttle! Two laser cannons shot, shields running off of a workaround power shunt, which reduces their efficiency, the sensor array got smashed, which means long-range sensors are at...what, fifteen percent efficiency?”

“Twenty-eight, don’t be dramatic.” 

“That’s not much better, Kay. Oh, look, we lost water recycling too. And the hyperdrive system is fluctuating. It could burn out at any minute.” 

“All of this can be fixed.”

Bodhi nearly slammed his hands against the console. “Not right now. That’s the point. We’re so low on supplies I can’t fix any of this. I can maybe do a quick patch job on the water recycling, but that doesn’t help you at all. If I had just been able to get my head out of my ass a little sooner—” 

“Bodhi, you were exhausted and you needed a few days to rest and likely some additional nutrition. You didn’t get them, but you’re here anyway. You did enough.” 

“I still feel terrible.” Bodhi set his hands down on the console and made a face of pain, lifting them again. 

“You clearly do feel terrible, what’s wrong with your hands?” 

Bodhi carefully peeled his gloves off, “They became infected, after Lah’mu. I’ve been putting bacta on...but never was able to stop using them long enough to really let them heal.” 

Bodhi’s palms showed scabbed over blisters, fresh blood seeping through cracks around the edges, skin angry and red. 

“Well, put more bacta on it.”

Bodhi’s face looked a little sad. “All out. Can’t fix you, can’t fix me...Kay, I don’t know what we’re going to do next.” 

“You still need rest. There is a large ship junkyard in the Persaal system. It’s close, we can jump in and hide. Even if the hyperdrive goes out, there should be sufficient salvage there to replace it. The metal will disrupt sensors, and we will figure out our next plan from there.”

* * *

Raner’s ship blinked in along the edge of the Persaal system. He glanced down at his short-range sensors, confirmed that Verlaine, Janson, and Moonsong were with him. He opened up the short-ranged comms, “Alright, you know the drill, I’ll sweep for an outgoing hyperspace trail while the three of you scan for in system—” 

A mid-range tightbeam comms request alert started blinking on his console. “Hold a moment,” he ordered instead, and opened the line. “This is Raner.”

“Raner, this is Alph. Rook is in-system. We saw him dodge into the solar edge of the junkyard.” 

“Finally. Wait. _You_ saw him?” 

“Yes, that’s where things get complicated. Hooper and I are in-system, along with a number of other Rebellion personnel. The Rebellion was making a play for the Persaal Manufacturing Yards. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Empire beat us to it. There’s three Imperial Cruisers at the yards right now. Brass has made the call not to risk the Rebellion ships. Your orders are to power down and hide.” Alph sounded frustrated as he gave the orders. 

“But he’s right there,” Raner couldn’t help but bite out.

“I know.” Alph’s voice echoed Raner’s own frustration. “I know. But, listen, the cruisers shouldn’t stay in-system for long. They’ll offload troops and leave. If we just stay quiet until then, we can grab Rook as soon as we’re clear. Just power down and wait.” 

“Acknowledged,” Raner said. He gave the order to the squadron.

* * *

“I’m not sure how much longer we can wait,” Bodhi finally said. 

“You have not yet achieved sufficient rest,” K-2SO responded. 

“Yes. But the water recycling system was broken. It’s just barely limping along. I still need water to live, and we’re going to run out soon. Hyperdrive motivator blew after the last trip, so if we ever want to leave the system we’re going to need to get that dealt with as well.” 

“This is a largely independent station. The shuttle shouldn’t stand out excessively. I believe it will be possible to obtain repair parts and fresh water in exchange for providing cargo transport or collecting salvage.” 

“Alright. Let’s go, then.” 

Bodhi took the helm as K-2SO powered up the shuttle. He powered on the sublights, dodging toward the station. He grunted. “Even if the sensors hadn’t been malfunctioning, all the dead ships around would be frying them all to hell anyway.” 

“It also makes it less likely for people to scan us. This works to our benefit.”

Bodhi tipped his head to the side. “True. It’s more likely that someone is trying to find us than that there is something that we are trying to—”

Bodhi rounded the last of the gigantic hulls with the shuttle and his words caught in his mouth. Looming large and filling up the viewscreen was an Arquitens-class Command Cruiser. And where there was a command cruiser...

Nothing was showing on sensors. Bodhi threw the shuttle into reverse and gunned the thrusters, hoping to escape before the cruiser saw. 

Unfortunately, as the shuttle rotated and retreated, Bodhi caught sight of two more light cruisers. One was already behind him. He had flown right into the middle of their formation. Maybe they hadn’t noticed…

The command cruiser began turning its nose towards him. The other two cruisers moved to cut off his escape.

“No. No no no.” Bodhi ran his fingers across the control board, considering different courses of action. All useless. There wasn’t a good way out.

“Fuck,” said K-2SO. “Is that a correct use of the epithet?” 

The comm line clicked on, and on open comms the Imperial ship gave the order. “Shuttle Dancing Hornet, this is Command Cruiser Intimidator. Bodhi Rook, surrender immediately and submit to Imperial detainment.” 

“Yeah,” Bodhi informed K-2SO, “fuck.” 

Bodhi turned to K-2SO’s body. He saw the glowing eyes pointed back at him. Bodhi swallowed. “I don’t...I don’t see a good way out of this one.” 

K-2SO shook his head. 

“This is feeling like the end of the line. I—I know you prefer the shuttle now. But do you want me to jettison the KX-Chassis? Then you’ve got at least a chance of surviving this. After all,” Bodhi said, ghost of a smile on his face as he remembered a very different suicide run, what felt like a lifetime ago, “I know you can survive in space.” 

“Bodhi,” K-2SO said, “it’s not just that I prefer being in the shuttle, now. I’ve suspected for a while now that the backups are not fully copying my systems. So I checked. I can’t run all my processes through the KX-chassis. Whatever being in here and running droid bodies as satellites has done...I’m not the same droid I was. So the KX...it wouldn’t be me. Not really. I’m tied to the shuttle, for better or worse.” 

Bodhi sighed. “Damn. I was really hoping there was a way out for you. Well. I suppose we’ve been together this long...” 

“...we should see it through to the end,” K-2SO finished. 

Bodhi reached forward and patted the console. “One way or another. It’s been a good run. We took out a Star Destroyer!”

“We took out the Death Star," K-2SO pointed out. 

"Pilots took out the Death Star."

"Which would not have been possible without the plans."

"You think."

"I calculate. Besides. I died for that. It counts."

Bodhi grinned at the console.

The comm flickered open again. “Shuttle Dancing Hornet, this is Command Cruiser Intimidator. Repeat, Bodhi Rook, surrender immediately and submit to Imperial detainment or you will be destroyed.”

“So,” Bodhi said, clearing his throat, “we’re not going to make it easy on the bastards.”

“No. We are not. Shall I power up the plasma cannon?” 

“Yes. Kay...whatever happens next, it’s been a pleasure flying with you.”

“Likewise, Bodhi Rook.” 

Bodhi’s felt defiance rise in him as he set his face into firm lines. He reached for the comm, set it open, long range, full blast. “This is Bodhi Rook, calling Imperial Vessel Intimidator and associated ships. I regret to inform you that this is not shuttle ‘Dancing Hornet.’”

Bodhi licked his lips and something between a smirk and a snarl grew on his face. “Fuck you, this is Rogue One. _And if I’m going down, **I’m taking you with me**_.”


	9. In Which Things Are Resolved

* * *

Raner clenched his hands down on his flight controls. He had his orders. Stay silent. Do not draw attention to the Rebellion fleet presence. 

But Rook was right there. 

And Rook was going to die. 

And Rook was facing death with a defiant yell. He was going down fighting. 

And Raner was stuck on the dark side of a junkyard while the man he had followed to Scarif then followed across the galaxy died thinking he was alone. 

“Fuck this,” Raner said, and powered his X-Wing on. 

His ship leapt off the side of the hull he was perched on, and he pointed his fighter at the three light cruisers. He had barely cleared the side of the hollowed-out Star Destroyer when three more X-Wings swung up into formation behind him, so smooth it looked like a coordinated flight plan rather than a suicidal impulse. 

His short-range comm crackled on, and Janson’s warm voice came through. “Not without us, Boss.” 

"We were just waiting for you to go first because you're the only one they won't court-martial," Moonsong said next. 

"If we live," Verlaine added. 

Janson laughed. "Goes without saying!" 

Raner was surprised for a split second. Then he thought about the team he had recruited. A cocky loudmouth spoiling for a fight. A smuggler whose morals led her to the Rebellion. A quiet Alderaanian survivor who had already defied orders once to follow her conscience. Raner smiled, affection rising in his chest. 

“Wouldn't be so sure about the court-martial...” he said.

"Ah, well, can't blame a girl for hoping," Moonsong said in response. 

“Let’s go see if we can bring him home.”

* * *

“They’re moving. The X-Wings.” Alph reached out his hand and frantically waved it at Mika, hitting her shoulder repeatedly. 

“Are they?” Mika looked over at the display, “Yeah. Shit. They’re going to die. Four snubfighters and an overpowered shuttle against three cruisers.” 

“You think they should have left him alone?” Alph hated the way his voice cracked, showing his anger. He knew that orders were orders. He knew this wasn’t the first time Mika had watched people die. He just hated knowing there was nothing he could do. 

“No, kid, no. I’m glad Rook’s not alone.” Mika reached out her hand, settled it on Alph’s shoulder. “You should say goodbye. It….it doesn’t make things easier, but it’s one less thing to regret.” 

Alph nodded. He reached out, opened the tight-band comm line he had used to communicate with Raner before. "Pilots, I see you’re moving. Good. It’s the right thing to do. Glad we won't be leaving Rook to the vultures. He deserves better. Force be with you, Rogue Squadron. For Jedha."

Alph finished, lump in his throat as he looked over at Mika. Mika nodded to him. She leaned into the comms and said, “Give ‘em hell.” Then she cut off the line. 

Mika looked down at the panel then said, “Oops,” in an utterly deadpan tone of voice. 

“Oops?” Alph asked.

“I must have routed your signal wrong. That was an open channel, not a tight-band,” Mika said, voice flat and but amusement sparking in her eyes.

Alph looked down at the comms panel, eyes growing wide in horror. “So everyone heard…”

“Everyone in-system at least. From the fleet to Rook to the Empire.” 

“Our orders were specifically to not draw attention to—” Alph cast a panicked glance back at the door to the comms room. He pitched his voice low. “Mika, you’ve compromised the fleet.” 

“Everyone makes mistakes, Alph,” Mika said, looking unconcerned as she turned back to the panel. 

“Right. ‘Mistake.’ You’ve been doing this for forty years. That ‘mistake’ might get you court-martialed.”

Mika leaned close to Alph and said in a low undertone, “Alph, Comms can’t do a damn thing to control the fighting. All we can do is try to make sure _everyone_ has the needed information. That nobody can pretend that they don’t know what is going on.” Mika gave a half smirk and moved back. From outside in the hallway there was shouting, someone angry coming towards the comms room. “Like you said, I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive. Twice. I was bound to mess something up sooner or later.”

* * *

“Force be with you Rogue Squadron. For Jedha” 

“Give ‘em hell.”

It took Bodhi longer than it should have to parse that last sentence. His mind was on flying, pulling the shuttle into a quick defensive spin away from the Light Cruiser’s line of fire, followed by a fast drop to avoid the TIEs currently deployed. 

He pulled off a spin that put K-2SO in a good position to fire and...one TIE down. That bought some breathing room. He took a second to replay the message. 

“Rogue...squadron?” 

“It appears we are not the only ones in the vicinity.” 

Three more TIES, in a tight V formation screamed by above him, Bodhi pulled the shuttle into a climb, spinning as he went to confuse targeting sensors. “I noticed that.” 

“I am not referring to the TIE fighters.” A splash of fire, no damage. Bodhi knew he was coming up on another cruiser’s firing arc and forced himself to dodge back into the TIE’s firing range. TIEs might kill him slow, but those cruisers could kill him with one good hit. The shuttle’s already compromised shields groaned under two shots that connected.

“Shit,” Bodhi muttered, sending the shuttle screaming to a halt and watching as one of the TIEs overshot him. He twisted and dropped, trying to give K-2SO the best chance of shooting back. 

His drop nearly ran him into an X-Wing. His breath caught in his throat as he fumbled to dive out of the way. Before he could, the X-Wing flashed red-orange death past him, and the TIE exploded. 

His comms crackled to life again, this time a deep, unfamiliar voice. “Rogue Leader, this is Rogue Two, standing by.”

Three additional voices ran all on top of each other, “Rogue Three, standing by.”

Bodhi twisted in his seat, spotting two additional X-Wings.

The first voice chuckled, “We’ll work that out later.”

Bodhi looked around, frantic. There were no more TIEs in the vicinity. Still heaving shaky breaths, he opened his comm. “I take it you aren’t with the Empire, then.” 

“Not at all. Captain Raner, with the Alliance to Restore the Republic. And may I say, Sir, that it’s a pleasure to have caught up with you at last.” 

Another batch of TIEs found them, and there was a moment of scrambling as all the ships started TIE hunting. Bodhi fumbled at the controls, utterly unused to flying in a pack.

“Sorry it’s not under better circumstances,” a woman’s voice said, dry. Above the shuttle, an X-Wing blasted a TIE fighter. 

“No time for regrets,” Raner said again. “Alright, we can get you coordinates to a safe base. We’ll keep them off you long enough for a hyperspace jump.” 

“That’s...going to be an issue. My hyperdrive motivator is out entirely. I’m...I’m not making it out of this one.” Bodhi gave a tired smile at the comms panel. “It means a lot that you tried to save me. You go ahead and get clear.” 

“Rogue Leader, you need to get a lot better at giving orders. That’s a lousy order,” said another male voice. “So what’s your actual plan?” 

“My plan was to make them bleed for every inch,” Bodhi said. 

“Now there’s an order I can get behind,” the man said.

Bodhi gave a short laugh. “Alright then.”

The shuttle and the X-Wings swung up, the X-Wings somehow following Bodhi’s clumsy lead. 

It was disorienting, to have backup. They were probably all going to die. Still, it felt...nice, after all this time alone, to know that there were people around who were willing to fight with him. 

They fought together for what felt like forever...and what was likely only a few minutes. Bodhi’s hands ached on the controls, he felt tired and knew he was growing disoriented. Still, the adrenaline kept the weariness at bay, and hearing the pilots fight and curse and whoop around him brought an energy that was strange but welcome. 

“My systems are now prioritized to fight with only you as an ally. It is strange, having companions. Not unwelcome,” K-2SO observed.

“Not at all,” Bodhi said softly.

Still, energy aside, allies aside, the long minutes of battle dragged on and the odds grew longer. Bodhi looked up and saw two of the Light Cruisers, their menacing silhouette offset by the moon glowing behind them. Bodhi was exhausted. He knew it was only a matter of time before the green blasts took them.

But... there was something wrong with the moon. The top of it distorted, and for a moment the moon seemed like it was stretching. The circle became an oval and then the top stretched and narrowed and resolved itself into a truly massive ship. 

Cresting over the moon rose a Mon Calamari flagship, flanked by two additional frigates and a squadron of snubfighters. The flagship began firing missiles as soon as they cleared the moon. Eight bolts in quick succession crashed into one of the cruisers. The first four rippled against the shield, the fifth caused the shield to burn red and dissipate, and the remaining three raked across the top of the cruiser. 

Bodhi felt the ship-shuddering jolt of the plasma cannon go off, and a shot from the shuttle joined those of the flagship. Bodhi was glad K-2SO was on top of things, because he was just sitting there, stunned by the sudden turning of the tides.

The Light Cruiser started flickering and burning, going dark and listing to the side. 

The pilots whooped across his comms, chatter washing over him. 

“It’s about damn time!” 

“Always takes the brass a while to get off their asses.” 

“Holy shit, Rook, is that a plasma cannon?” 

But by far the sweetest sound was the open comm line coming from the flagship. “All ships, prepare to engage.”

And as Bodhi watched, the two remaining Arquitens-class cruisers rotated slowly, pointing away from him, away from the shuttle. Their TIE swarms disengaged from the X-Wings and ran for the cruisers’ docking bays. As the flagship and the frigates started to rain down fire, the first cruiser, then the second, stretched and blurred to lightspeed. 

Bodhi’s hands were shaking on the controls. He held the shuttle still as the Mon Calamari flagship came closer and closer, covering the shuttle. 

“Rogue One, this is the Ardent. We’d like to welcome you aboard.” 

Bodhi swallowed, unable to see the console through the tears blurring his eyes.

“Bodhi,” K-2SO said next to him. “I have located the Rebellion.” 

Bodhi looked over at K-2SO. The absurdity of the comment met the adrenaline crash met the overwhelming relief that he was still alive. Still here. Bodhi started laughing. Gasping for breath through the laughter, he managed to calm himself long enough to reach for the comms. “Ardent, this is Rogue One. It would be a pleasure. We’ve been looking for you for a long, long, time.”

* * *

K-2SO’s arm braced around Bodhi as he stumbled his way out of the shuttle. At the base of the shuttle ramp, four pilots in jumpsuits stood, smiling. Surrounding them were a host of people, looking curious, looking welcoming, looking ecstatic to see him. 

Bodhi looked around, stunned and exhausted. “I didn’t know...I didn’t know anyone was paying attention...” 

Raner stepped up, giving Bodhi a sharp salute. “We’ve been looking since we knew you survived. I’m damn glad we were able to catch up with you in time.”

“Probably not as glad as I am,” Bodhi said, weary grin stretched across his face. “It’s been...a rough few months.”

Raner chuckled at that. “I’m looking forward to hearing your side of that. Looks like you could use some food, first. Maybe a chance to put your feet up.” 

Bodhi slumped against K-2SO a little more; K-2SO tightened his grip. “That sounds phenomenal.” 

“You need substantially more than that. Hydration and medical attention are more urgent needs, in addition to rest and nutrition.” 

Bodhi flicked his eyes up to Raner. “This is K-2SO, he’s been looking out for me. He’s also right. I’m...I’m a little worn down. We both are. My shuttle needs—”

“Hey,” Raner said gently, stepping up to sling an arm under Bodhi’s other shoulder. “We’ll get that taken care of. You’re safe now.” 

Bodhi looked out into the sea of faces, overwhelmed by the attention, the care. Bodhi thought that he and K-2SO had been out there on their own, looking for the Rebellion. But no...it turned out the Rebellion had been looking for him as well. 

Bodhi swallowed, a lump in his throat. “Thank you.”

“It is our pleasure, Sir. Welcome home.”

Home. It could be. Bodhi looked up at K-2SO, who looked down at Bodhi. Bodhi smiled. “Glad we finally made it.”

In his ear, only Bodhi heard K-2SO say, “I calculated our odds of surviving until we found the Rebellion at less than 1.435%. But I have learned that you defy calculation. It has been a frustrating privilege to fly with you, Bodhi Rook.”

The overwhelming scale of what he and K-2SO had gone through together struck him and Bodhi didn’t have words for the emotions that followed. He felt his eyes start to burn. He let his head drop down, trying to gain some measure of privacy while everyone was looking at him. 

To the crowd, K-2SO replied, “We are only one year, four months, twenty-seven days, three hours, and twelve minutes overdue on checking in. I hardly see what the fuss is about.” 

Covered by the assorted chuckles and laughs of the crowd, Bodhi softly said, “Likewise. Hope you don’t think you’ve gotten rid of me. We lived. You’re stuck with me for a long, long time.” 

“There is no scenario that would please me more. Considering this, I have a number of dietary adjustments to extend your longevity, including in increase in plant-based…”

Bodhi lifted his head again, smile on his face, and allowed himself to be lead through the crowd as K-2SO strategized nutrition in his ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...that's it guys. We did it. We got Bodhi back to the Rebellion. 
> 
> Finally.
> 
> The story doesn't end here. I've got two more stories already mostly-written, but now is a good time to hop in the comments and let me know if there is anything I referenced or alluded to that you'd like to see fleshed out more, that you think deserves its own screentime. 
> 
> I so, so appreciate everyone who has read, enthused, chattered about...etc...this series. You are amazing, and lovely. Thanks for sticking with me this far, and here's to the continuing adventures of K-2SO and Bodhi Rook.
> 
> And, if you want to know more, [I’m on Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sassysnowperson)


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